


Falling In Love (But In Swedish)

by Ardene, maliciouslycreative



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Aromantic Keith, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Flirting, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gay Disaster Shiro (Voltron), Humor, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Past Emo Keith, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, puns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-08-19 12:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16534430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardene/pseuds/Ardene, https://archiveofourown.org/users/maliciouslycreative/pseuds/maliciouslycreative
Summary: Keith should have known better than to ignore his mom's phone calls. And he definitely should have known better than to leave his phone unattended in a room with Lance. So he really shouldn't have been surprised when Lance, who was miffed that Keith had ditched him to hang out with Shiro, had told Keith's mom that Keith had a Swedish boyfriend named Sven.He probably should have told his mom that Lance was making it all up. In retrospect there were a lot of things he should have probably done differently. It's a good thing that Shiro's a really good friend.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I said to my sister one day "I want a fake dating fic where Keith had to make up a fake boyfriend. Who he named Sven and is Swedish" and then we got talking about it and she went "so which one of us is going to write it?" and I was like "we can write it together!!!". So here you have it folks, our joint work of these two idiots being in love. I (maliciouslycreative) will be writing the chapters from Keith's pov and she (Ardene) will be writing Shiro's pov.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Keith makes some bad choices and then tries to fix it by making more bad choices. At least Shiro is there to support him and probably go down with this ship.

Mom: The pic of you and your bf is really cute

Keith stared at his phone screen, dread slowly building in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know what his mother was talking about but something told him that either Lance or Romelle had something to do with it. Maybe if he ignored it then it would go away.

Keith’s phone buzzed again and he let out a long-suffering groan.

Mom: I’m disappointed that I had to go to your friends but I will take what I can get

Lance it was, then.

Keith jabbed at his screen until he pulled up Lance’s number and held the phone in a death grip while he waited for Lance to pick up. He had to wait 4 agonising rings until Lance greeted him with a “What’s up, buttercup?”

“LANCE.” Was all Keith said in that special tone he reserved only for Lance when he was about 3 seconds from death.

“That’s my name.” Lance said, almost sounding bored.

“What did you _do_?” Keith started pacing the room. He had to work out some of this anger or else he really was going to break his phone.

“You gotta be more specific. I do a lot of things, Keith.”

“You sent a picture to my mother? Of me and Sven?”

There was several seconds of silence before Lance said in a rush. “Ok, I love your mom but she kinda scares me and well, yah, I sent a picture of you and Shiro passed out on the couch last week at movie night.”

“You what?” Keith stopped pacing as a look of absolute horror spread over his face.

Entirely ignoring Keith Lance continued babbling, “But it’s not entirely my fault! I mean, your mom totally knows that I’m the weak link. What was I supposed to do? And _you're welcome_. I could have chosen a lot worse people for you to be fake dating-”

“Lance.” Keith growled.

“Like do you remember that guy from New Years with the mullet? You could have been mullet boyfriends. Or like-”

“LANCE.” God he had to use the tone twice in one conversation.

“DUDE. Just chill! Everything’ gonna be fine.” There was some shuffling on the other end of the line. “Anyway, I G T G. Maybe you can use this as an opportunity to finally ask Shiro out or something.”

“I don’t want to ask Shiro out!” Keith yelled.

There was no response. Keith pulled his phone away from his ear and stared at the call ended screen. Lance hung up on him. What an ass! Who doesn’t even say goodbye?

Grinding his teeth Keith jammed his phone in his pocket so hard it’s a miracle he didn’t tear right through the bottom of it. He grabbed his hoodie as he stormed out the door, up the stairs and banged on Shiro’s door. He didn’t even realise he’d forgotten shoes until Shiro was swinging the door open.

The look of concern instantly melted off Shiro’s face as soon as he saw it was Keith. “Keith, I was just about to have some dinner, why don’t you come in?”

Keith’s anger instantly fizzled out and his brain went dead as he was met with one of Shiro’s kind smiles. “Uhh, sure.” He mutely followed Shiro into his suite then into the kitchen. It’s not until he was sitting at the table and Shiro was puttering around the stove that Keith remembered that Shiro was hands down the worst cook he’d ever met.

“It’s nothing fancy but I thought I’d try making some Kraft Dinner. You know, something that’s pretty hard to screw up.” He said it so casually, like someone that did not have a lifetime ban on cooking eggs of any sort.

Shiro placed a bowl in front of Keith. Suddenly Keith had one fear in this world and it was sitting in front of him in a floral Corelle bowl. The noodles had lost most of their shape and there’s far more liquid in the bowl than there should be. Briefly Keith wondered if he should ask for hot sauce. After stirring the bowl he decided that no, not even hot sauce could save this.

Tentatively Keith scooped some of the noodles on to his fork and a surprising amount of liquid dripped back into the bowl. Steeling himself he brought the fork towards his mouth and oh my god does he smell vanilla? He sniffed at the fork again and yah he can definitely smell vanilla.

“Is something the matter?” Shiro was staring at him slight frown on his face.

“I uhh…” Keith hastily shoved the fork full of noodles into his mouth. It took every ounce of his strength to chew and swallow.

“Is it really that bad?” The hurt in Shiro's voice was like a knife straight to Keith’s heart.

“Uhhhh.”

Thankfully Keith didn't have to spend long stalling for an answer because Shiro put a forkful of noodles in his mouth and then promptly spat it back out. He looked down at his bowl in betrayal. “That is far worse than you made it out to be.” He locked eyes with Keith. “I can't believe you swallowed.”

Keith's face turned a brilliant shade of red. He stuttered out a few sounds that may have been words before Shiro's face went bright red in realization.

“That’s not- I’m going to go order some pizza.” Shiro got up from the table and walked out of the room.

Keith laid his head on the table and stayed there until Shiro came back a couple minutes later, tablet in hand. Shiro didn’t even bother asking what Keith wanted as he scrolled through screens on his tablet. It was a testament to how many times they’d resorted to ordering pizza when it was just the two of them. It still made Keith’s heart warm.

“Keith?” Shiro asked as he placed the tablet on the table.

“Yah?” Keith rolled his head so that he could look up at Shiro but still had his cheek resting against the table.

“What’s up? You kind of looked like you wanted to murder someone before you came in and I nearly poisoned you.”

Keith let out a loud groan and sat up, only to bury his face in his hands. “So my mom's been bugging me about Sven.”

“Well, you do know how to stop that.”

Keith glared through his fingers then went back to hiding his face. “Anyway, apparently she got tired of waiting for me to divulge info about my fake Swedish boyfriend and went to Lance. Who sent her a picture of me and Sven.” He pulled a hand away briefly to do finger quotes when he said Sven. “She used a picture of us sleeping against each other at movie night.”

He expected an immediate response. Maybe not the immediate volatile rage that he'd reacted with. The silence was enough for him to unbury his face and sit up straight in his chair.

Shiro was leaning on the table with one elbow, face in his hand. When he locked eyes with Keith there was amusement there and his shoulders started to tremble. It only took him a few seconds until he was shaking with silent laughter.

“You're not mad?” Keith's mouth dropped open.

Leaning back in his chair Shiro shook his head. “It's kind of funny. And I mean it could be worse. He could have sent her a picture of you and that guy with the mullet from New Years. Or photoshopped you with someone really embarrassing.”

Keith let or a long-suffering sigh.

“Besides, if I'm stuck fake dating someone I'm glad it’s you.”

With his cheeks turning scarlet Keith glanced away. “I guess. I just-” he sighed. “Lance needs to butt out of my love life. Or lack thereof.”

“Have you asked him to?”

“Many, many, _many_ times.” Keith met Shiro's eyes again. “He says it's too sad for him to watch me go through school not dating anyone. Or at the very least hooking up.”

“I understand, relationships when you're in school can be…” Shiro frowned and started fidgeting with his hands. “They can be hard to juggle. Especially when you have a tendency to throw yourself into your work 120%.”

“Hey,” Keith gently kicked Shiro under the table. “I still say it's his loss.”

The corners of Shiro’s mouth turned up in the sad attempt at a smile.

“Besides, we may not have become friends if I didn't come up to yell at you for playing Adele at full volume for like 4 hours straight.”

This caused Shiro to snort and a full smile to spread across his lips. “That's fair. We are neighbors though so there is always the possibility we could have met under better circumstances.”

“Or knowing Lance, worse. He has a tendency to come off… strong”

Shiro snorted. “That’s putting it mildly.” Shiro put one elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand. “Honestly it still surprises me that you two have been friends so long.”

“That makes two of us.” Keith rocked the kitchen chair onto it’s back legs and stared up at the ceiling. “We sure got along like a house on fire when we were kids. But after my dad died he was - well he stuck by me. Even when I punched James Griffin in the face.”

“James?” Shiro raised an eyebrow.

The front legs of Keith’s chair snapped to the ground with a loud bang. “Wait, we never told you about James?”

Shiro shook his head.

“Oh man,” Keith ran his hand back through his hair. “Ok but did we tell you about Voltron?”

“Bits and pieces. Something about running around the playground being space paladins and there were cats involved. Also some emo kid and his lesbian entourage?”

“That’s…” Keith tilted his head as he considered what to say, “Well, not totally inaccurate. Anyway it was James, Lance and Hunk that started the paladins. Pidge sort of forced her way in and told them if they excluded her for being a girl she’d beat them all up. For whatever reason Lance thought I was his rival or something. I don’t know, it was just Lance being Lance. Anyway he insisted he needed a rival on the team. Eventually he just annoyed me enough that I joined because it was easier than dealing with him.”

“Understandable,” Shiro chuckled.

“I don’t know what made them decide to be paladins that ran around space in giant mechanical lions. I know Pidge and Hunk were pretty big into anime and Lance loved Power Rangers so,” Keith shrugged. “Anyway when my dad died and I wound up in the home for a while the other kids were, well, kids. They were shitty. James was always kind of jealous of me because I was just naturally better at some stuff than him. He made some comment one day, god I can’t even remember what it was any more, but it was about my parents abandoning me so I punched him in the face. Probably would have beat the shit out of him too if Lance and Hunk hadn’t dragged me off him. I thought they were going to say some stupid shit too but then Lance just hugged me and told me that I wasn’t his rival any more, I was his brother and if it was up to him then I’d come live with his family.”

Keith wiped at his eye. “I…” the words were caught in his throat.

“Hey,” Shiro’s hand rested over his on the table. “It’s ok if you don’t want to continue. The pizza will be here any minute now and we can watch some Netflix then study.”

Smiling slightly Keith shook his head. “No, I’m fine.” He wiped away another tear with his free hand. “After that I realised that sure I’d lost my dad but I’d found a family in Lance, Hunk and Pidge. Then mom and Romelle showed up and things got a lot better. I mean, I was still a kid with an attitude problem and embarrassing emo myspace phase but at least I had this wacky family that’d be there for me even when I made dumb choices.”

Keith looked up and caught Shiro’s eyes. The smile that Shiro was giving him was so soft and fond it kind of made Keith’s heart melt. He went to pull both of his hands into his lap but then realised Shiro was still gently holding the one on the table. He was about to say something when the doorbell rang and they both nearly jumped out of their chairs.

“Food’s here,” Shiro croaked out as he lurched to his feet. “I’ll grab the pizza, you start the Netflix?”

“Yah, sure.” Keith muttered.

Keith watched Shiro go, heart fluttering and a blush spreading on his cheeks. What even was that? Briefly he could hear Lance’s stupid voice saying _“Maybe you can use this as an opportunity to finally ask Shiro out or something”._

“I know you’re my best friend, Lance, but I would throw you under a fucking bus.” Keith groaned to the empty room. He sighed. Whatever. He shoved his emotions deep down and headed for the living room. He had things to do, namely get this nasty vanilla macaroni taste out of his mouth, and binge Netflix with his other best friend. The one that didn’t tell his mom he was dating a fake guy from Sweden.

-x-x-x-

When his phone buzzed on his way to his last final Keith almost didn't check it. He had a coffee laced with Monster in one hand and he was trying his best not to spill it all over himself as he pushed through throngs of sleep deprived and desperate students. He ducked into a doorway, set down his cup and whipped out his phone.

Mom: Good luck on your exam!

Mom: You'll do great!

Mom: Also just double checking, it’ the five of you coming home next week, right?

Mom: love you :)

Keith groaned and smacked his head against the door

Keith: thx mom

Keith: ya that's right. We will try to leave early but u know how lance is so will prob be there early afternoon

Mom: Great!

Mom: Can't wait to meet Sven

Keith: yah he wants to meet you too

Mom: Now get to you exam, you don't want to be late!!

Hastily Keith shoved his phone back in his pocket, grabbed his cup and began pushing his way through the halls again. God, he really needed to break up with his fake boyfriend before he headed home so his mom doesn't get too suspicious.

He practically flew into his classroom, 3 minutes to spare and sat at a desk kitty corner behind Shiro. He shot Shiro a thumbs up before he started rummaging through his bag for his supplies. He pulled out his calculator, an eraser and then froze. Wait. What did his mom say? He ripped his phone out and scrolled back through his texts. Five. That didn't seem right. He counted on his fingers as he listed off the group of them that was going home.

  1. Himself
  2. His sister Romelle
  3. His sister's best friend, Allura, who wanted to meet their mom and friends that wound up going to different universities
  4. Lance (unless Keith left him behind for starting this whole Sven nonsense in the first place)



Keith stared down at his 4 extended fingers and his thumb still resting against his palm. “oh no” he whispered.

“Keith, are you ok?” Shiro asked.

Keith's head whipped up and he locked eyes with Shiro. He didn't know what to say because his brain was too busy providing him with all the ways his life could go horribly wrong.

Frowning, Shiro looked down at Keith’s desk and noticed only the calculator and eraser sitting there. He smiled brightly and dug into his pencil case. He pulled out a pencil and offered it to Keith. “I've got you.”

Keith took the pencil, uttered a “thank you” and forced a smile. The pencil had little cartoon cats on it. It was adorable.

The door slammed shut and the TA started going over the rules of the exam.

Taking a deep breath Keith dug through his backpack one more time to find his pencil sharpener. He told himself repeatedly to panic after the exam otherwise he’d have worse things to worry about than his mother meeting his nonexistent boyfriend.

He could fix this mess. Probably. Or just kill Lance and then he could at least be in prison and say that Sven dumped him for being a murderer. Yah, that would definitely work.

-x-x-x-

Keith finished the exam half an hour early. Usually he'd stay and go over his exam until the end of the exam period. However every time he saw a 5 it twisted his stomach in knots. So after a few torturous minutes he closed his booklet, gathered his things and handed in his exam. He almost handed the pencil back to Shiro but Shiro was so engrossed in his exam that Keith didn't want to startle him.  

In a stupor he wandered out of the the building and flopped down on a random piece of lawn. He fiddled with Shiro’s pencil while he thought up ways to get out of this situation.

  1. Kill Lance and go to jail (ok the more he thought about this the more he realised it was a monumentally stupid idea)
  2. Tell his mom he was not actually dating Sven and that everything was made up (this was also a bad idea since his mom seemed so genuinely excited that he was dating someone. Not to mention this lie had been going on long enough that it was really a dick move to tell her at this point)
  3. Fake break up with Sven (realistically his best bet)
  4. Have Sven fake die (or is it just die? Does fake die just sound too extra? The point is Sven dies and it’s very tragic but oh shit what if his mom wanted to come to the fake funeral? )
  5. Find someone to pretend to be Sven (the last option he should probably consider but unfortunately after 3 is probably the best option)



He was seriously considering number 5 when he remembered that Lance had sent the picture a few days ago and his mom now thought that Shiro was Sven. And ok maybe Keith could ask Shiro but then he'd probably have to admit to some stuff and Keith's number one skill was burying his emotions so deep that even he needed a map to find them again.

A shadow fell over his face and Keith startled. He relaxed when he noticed it was Shiro standing over him.

“You ok?” Shiro was frowning down at him. “You left the exam before the time was up.”

Keith let out a groan. “I messed up. Not on the exam. With my mom.”

“Alright.” Shiro sat on the ground next to him. “You want to talk about it?”

Keith put an arm over his face, pretending it was to block out the sun but really he couldn't be looking at Shiro for this. “I think I told my mom that Sven was coming with us when we go back to visit next week.”

“Maybe you're just overthinking this? What exactly did you say to her?”

Keith pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Shiro. “Well if you can find some other way to interpret this I would be grateful but I'm pretty sure I'm screwed.”

Shiro scrolled through the messages, face frustratingly neutral. After a couple minutes he glanced down at Keith. “So who all was supposed to be going down?”

“Me, Romelle, Lance, and Allura. There were supposed to be four of us.”

“So you managed to miscount four people?” Shiro raised an eyebrow and looked down at him clearly unimpressed.

“I’m bad at math?” Keith said weakly.

The look Shiro gave him told him that he was obviously not buying that.

Rolling his eyes Keith said, “Look, I haven’t slept in like 3 days and I hadn’t drunk my coffee yet.”

“You mean your heart attack in a cup.” Shiro made a disgusted face.

“Hey, don’t knock it until you try it.”

“No thank you, I don’t like the idea of having a heart attack at 26.” Shiro handed Keith’s phone back then laid down in the grass next to him. “Anyway, yah it looks like you told your mom you’re bringing Sven home.”

Keith groaned. “I really wanted you to say something different.” He rolled on his side so he could look at Shiro better. “Hey, wanna help me break up with my fake boyfriend?”

Shiro raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were hopelessly in love with him and couldn’t live without him. Lance’s words.”

Keith glared. It didn’t do much though since Shiro wasn’t even looking at him.

“Well you could just dump Sven for his hotter twin brother.”

“His what?” Keith’s eyes widened. “Since when does Sven have a twin brother?”

Laughing Shiro rolled on his side as well. “I was joking. But…” he glanced down at the grass and licked his lips. “If you wanted I could pretend to be Sven. I mean I guess I kind of am in a way thanks to Lance.”

Before Keith’s stupid brain could catch up with what was happening his stupid mouth was blurting out. “You’d really want to fake date me? As some Swedish guy that Lance made up? Did I mention that Lance made him up and to this day I don’t know everything he told my mom about my fake boyfriend because I was too afraid to ask?”

Shiro’s smile was kind and it made feelings that Keith was so sure he’d buried deeper than the Marianas Trench bubble up.

“Sure, I’d do anything to help you out, Keith. Even something as absurd as pretending to be Sven.”

“Alright, cool.” Keith scrambled to his feet and hoped that Shiro wouldn't notice the brilliant blush forming on his cheeks. “We should go home, maybe celebrate being done finals? Hash out the details of our relationship - fake relationship!”

“Sure thing.” Shiro got up and started heading towards the sidewalk.

“Hey,” Keith caught Shiro by the wrist and stopped him. “Thanks. For doing this. It really means a lot to me”

Shiro grinned. “You're welcome. Besides,” his smile turned mischievous, “I'm really excited to meet your mom.”

Keith paled. “Right, we have a lot of work to do. There's only a week until we head home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi to maliciouslycreative on [tumblr](https://maliciouslycreative.tumblr.com/), [pillowfort,](https://www.pillowfort.social/maliciouslycreative) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/a_soppon)!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro is going to be the best fake boyfriend ever. He's done all the research, there's no way anything can go wrong, even with Lance helping.

Shiro hadn’t left his house in three days. Normally he would go out for a jog, hit the gym, or even just grab a coffee. None of these things have happened for three days.

Was he starting to miss natural sunlight? Sure. An open window is nothing compared to feeling the breeze and sun on your skin. Was he beginning to miss socialising? Absolutely. He was a sociable person and, as Keith liked to make fun of him for, he could strike up a conversation with literally anyone. Anywhere. Yes, he had held up a lot of lines at the grocery store by getting distracted talking to the person behind him. Yes he feels guilty about it.

He looked back up at the Wikipedia page he was reading about Swedish politics. By the time he got to the Legislative Branch section he could feel his eyes beginning to blur. How long had he been at this for?

He looked at the clock to the left of him. 9:34 pm. He couldn’t do anything about getting some sunlight, but at least he could take a break and get in some socialising.

Shiro grabbed his keys and slipped his shoes on, locking the door behind him as he descended the stairs, stopping in front of Keith and Lance’s door.

He knocked.

“Shirooooooo my man, how are you doing?” Lance asked, flinging the door open. “Or, should I say, Sven?” He asked, wiggling his eyebrows while leaning against the opened door suggestively.

“Hi, Lance,” Shiro sighed. His eyes scanned the room behind him.

“If you’re looking for Keith he’s at work right now. But if you’re just looking for a homie to chill with I am bored out of my freaking mind.”

“Actually, I’ve been holed up for a few days now and I was hoping to hang for a bit,” Shiro said, rubbing his neck sheepishly. Lance gestured inside and he followed.

“So what up?” Lance asked, flopping down on the couch. Shiro sat down on his feet until Lance squirmed under his weight and moved them.

“Not much. Learning as much as I possibly can about Sweden,” Shiro said with a sigh.

“Wait, is that what got you holed up?” Lance asked, sitting up straight. “Dude, you know it’s not a big deal, right?”

“I know you say that but… I can’t let Keith down, you know?”

Shiro thought back to when he first met Keith. It had been just after a bad breakup with his former boyfriend, Adam. Their relationship had been rocky for a few months leading up to it, but he still didn’t expect the other shoe to drop when it did.

To say that he was a mess would be an understatement. He had been holed up crying for almost a week when he decided enough was enough, it was time to work on some self care and get himself back out there! And of course, self care may or may not, to Shiro, have included listening to sad Adele breakup songs for hours straight. It started off quiet, just something in the background as he did some squats to take things off his mind. Then he heard himself, sniffle, thought this is bullshit, and turned the music up louder as he began doing some push ups to drown out his own crying. Of course, as he thought of Adam more, he turned into full out sobs and turned his computer speakers as loud as they would go.

This was how Keith found him, tears streaming down his face, still holding a dumbbell in his left hand, Adele singing “sometime it lasts in love, but sometime it hurts instead”.  

Keith’s face had gone from one of pure rage to shock, asking in a small voice, “Jesus dude, are you okay?”

At the time he thought it was poetic, that while this beautiful boy sat on his couch, shoving tissues at his face, telling him everything would be okay, his YouTube playlist hit an ad with the song At Last playing in the background.

At last, indeed.

Shiro shook his head and tuned back into Lance, who was deep into some story about dropping a large Costco sized bottle of vanilla and breaking the lid and now he and Keith were trying to use up the vanilla as fast as possible since the lid is basically held together by masking tape.

Vanilla. Right. He had poisoned Keith the other day with his vanilla soy milk in the Kraft Dinner.

Shiro grimaced. Keith really did deserve better than him. But even so, Keith wanted him to do this. He wanted Shiro to be his fake boyfriend. There was no way he was going to let him down.

“Hey Lance, I was wondering if you could help me with something?” Shiro asked.

Lance looked up in surprise. “Wow, I thought I lost you there. Sure thing, buddy! Ol’ Lance here has got your back!”

Shiro took in a deep breath. He knew he was bordering the line between “wanting to help out his bud in his time of need” and “completely and utterly insane” but damnit Keith was worth it.

“Okay… so, you know we have to make Sven really feel real, right? I was thinking, he needs some kind of presence. Like, have a background. Family, friends, things to link him to Sweden. So I made a Facebook page for him, and well, it looked kind of empty so I made up a bunch of fake profiles to be his friends and family and stuff. So like, of course you guys will need to add Sven, but I don’t even have a Facebook for myself so I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed? I got the privacy settings for my fake family and friends set to maximum so I don’t think anyone should be able to see that none of these people are real and are only friends with each other but I think I might need some help posting things and making them seem authentic. You don’t really need to worry about writing in Swedish, too, since 86% of the country speaks English and since English is like, the language of the internet, it would make sense if they posted things in English. I have been learning Swedish in my free time so I will supply Swedish posts to pepper throughout as well.”

Lance’s jaw had been slowly opening up throughout the explanation. At the last word Lance seemed to realise he looked stupid and snapped his mouth shut before letting out a low whistle.

“Shiro, my dude, I don’t know if I am terrified or impressed. Really.”

“I know, it’s a bit much,” Shiro winced, “but I really could use your help.”

“Don’t worry, like I said, I got your back. Hold on, let me get my laptop and I’ll find your profile. By the way, how many fake profiles did you make for family and friends?”

“37.”

Lance stared at Shiro. Shiro stared back.

“Yup, we’d better get started,” Lance finally sighed.

-x-x-x-

Lance and Shiro were laughing with each other, browsing Shiro’s phone for pictures to upload and finding free stock images on the internet to help populate the other fake profiles. Just as they were debating whether or not it would be a bad idea to make Sven’s supposed sister a picture they found of an Asian woman laughing alone with salad, they heard the door rattle and Keith entered.

“I’m home,” Keith called. They heard ruffling as he took off his shoes and hung up his coat before he joined them in the living room. “Does this have something to do with the friend request I got for Sven an hour ago?” Keith asked, squinting over Lance’s shoulder at the laptop screen.

“Yup, Sven just got a Facebook and is now adding all his old family and friends from Sweden!” Lance smiled, pointing the screen to Keith so he could get a better look.

“What old family and friends?” Keith asked. “He doesn’t exist.”

“We may have, ahem, made some fake profiles,” Shiro admitted.

“Fake profiles? How many did you make?” Keith asked, eyeing the friend count suspiciously.

“37.”

“Yikes.”

“The rest are various people around campus that Sven would know, like you and me and Romelle and Allura,” Lance piped up.

“You know you don’t have to do all this, right…?” Keith asked, concern furrowing his brows.

“Look, Keith,” Shiro started, “I’m doing this because I want to. Because I want to do things right. And if making a few fake Facebook profiles and learning Swedish will help you then I will gladly do it.”

“Wait, you’re learning Swedish?” Keith asked.

“Yeah. On Duolingo. Although I have to admit that if I have to say one more sentence like ‘The man is drinking milk’ or ‘The woman eats an apple’ I think I might scream.”

Shiro could feel Keith’s eyes boring into him. “Shiro… what exactly have you done to prepare for this?”

“Not much!” Shiro put his hands up defensively, jumping to explain. “You know, just a few Facebook profiles-”

“A few,” Lance interrupted.

“And I read a few Wikipedia pages to learn about Sweden and studied some Google Maps to figure out where I grew up and what street I lived on and school I went to and stuff like that in case it comes up-”

“That isn’t going to come up!” Keith interrupted this time.

“And started learning the language because hey, what Swedish person wouldn’t know Swedish?”

“Shiro… let’s go out tomorrow. And, I don’t know, go get lunch. Hang out at the mall. Do anything. Please,” Keith begged.

“Yeah, do  _ anything _ ,” Lance said, wiggling his eyebrows at Keith.

“And you, Lance, stop enabling him,” Keith growled.

“Is it really that bad?” Shiro asked.

“No, it’s not bad. Like, it’s kinda sweet? But seriously, I think you need to get out of the house.”

Shiro could not agree more.

-x-x-x-

Shiro had to admit that it was nice to feel the sun again. The walk to the café was pretty short but Shiro enjoyed every minute of it. He made a mental note to make an effort to get out more, irrational obsessions or not.

He turned his attention to Keith and Lance, who were bickering over the correct way to pronounce “decal”. He was starting to worry that he would have to jump between them when their argument took a sudden turn towards hostile territory, but thankfully they arrived at the location. They agreed to disagree for the time being, seeing as they didn’t want to get kicked out by arguing inside. Again.

They ordered their meals- a Denver sandwich for Lance, a ham and swiss bagel for Keith, and a tomato soup with grilled cheese for Shiro. Lance then got jealous of Shiro’s soup and ordered a cream of broccoli for himself. Keith, not wanting to be outdone, ordered a vegetable soup as well. Then Lance decided he wanted one of the cookies in the display case, and since yeah those look delicious, Keith and Shiro ordered one as well. Finally, when the worker looked ready to murder them, they took their meals over to a table by the window and sat down.

Shiro picked up his sandwich and was about to take a bite when Lance shrieked “stop!” and grabbed his wrist.

Keith and Shiro both looked at him in alarm. “What is it?” Shiro asked.

“I need to take a photo for my Instagram, and I’m not sure whose lunch is gonna look the best on camera so I’m going to take a photo of all of them. I need them pristine!” Lance answered, whipping out his phone. He began to take pictures of his food from every angle imaginable.

“Are you serious?” Keith growled. He reached towards his bagel but Lance slapped his hand away with lightning reflexes. Keith crossed his arms and pouted.

“Let’s just let him do his thing,” Shiro suggested with a small shrug. It was best to not fight Lance over things like this.

Finally, when Shiro was worried his cheese was going to be cold, Lance put his phone away. Shiro and Keith took that as a sign that they could start eating.

They enjoyed their meals in silence for a few minutes when Lance suddenly piped up, “You know, we should revive your Instagram account, Shiro. Get you more of an online presence as Sven.”

“My Instagram? I don’t know, I never know what to put on that thing,” Shiro replied, chewing thoughtfully.

“That’s why I’m here, to help you!” Lance replied with a grin. “You know, I was looking at it last night after you went home. You didn’t connect it to your Facebook since, you know, you didn’t have one. You don’t mention anywhere on it who you are or where you live. You only have five pictures on there but they at least go back a few years so it gives proof that Sven existed before now. And hey, I am a great photographer! We got this!”

“I don’t know… what kind of stuff should we put on it?” Shiro asked.

“Just like put pictures of you without a shirt flexing or something, I don’t know. That seems to be popular,” Lance suggested.

Keith choked on his bagel.

Shiro pounded Keith on the back as he looked to Lance, “I don’t know, I don’t think I would be… comfortable doing that.”

“Hey, just a suggestion. Come on, we can start with a picture of our meals from today and go from there.”

Once Keith was able to breathe again they finished their lunches with minimal catastrophe.

-x-x-x-

Their next stop was the shopping mall. Shiro looked at Keith as they stood outside the doors. His face was decidedly looking more red than normal. He had a feeling it wasn’t due to his choking incident earlier.

“Come on you two, we’ve been standing here for five minutes. Man up already!” Lance shouted, grabbing their hands and trying to smash them together.

“Geez, fine, just stop!” Keith yelled, giving Lance a glare that would wither most men. He looked up to Shiro with a worried expression and gently moved his hand over Shiro’s so that their fingers were interlocked.

“See? Is that so bad?” Lance asked.

Shiro noticed that Keith was making a point of not looking at him. Somehow, his face looked even redder.

“Whatever, let’s just go. Don’t see why we have to practice holding hands anyways,” Keith muttered.

“Hey, just think, it could be worse! You could be holding Lance’s hand,” Shiro offered with a sly grin.

Keith rolled his eyes but Shiro saw a small smile grace his lips. Smiling back, Shiro grabbed the handle and pushed the door open.

As they walked around Shiro found that Keith’s hand felt nice in his own. The flesh was a bit rough, but it was calming and warm. Just like Keith. Without thinking, he gave Keith’s hand a little squeeze, and was surprised to feel Keith give a squeeze back. He looked over, and saw Keith looking at him, a shy smile on his face. Shiro smiled back. He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a familiar voice calling out to them.

“Oh my god, Keith! Keith!” Romelle ran up to them, Allura following close behind. “Keith!” She yelled again, stopping before them, waiting a moment to catch her breath.

“Uh, hi Romelle,” Keith said, looking suddenly embarrassed again.

“I can’t believe it!” Having composed herself, she flung her hands around Keith’s neck, the force of it separating their hands. Shiro couldn’t help but think how cold it felt.

“Can’t believe what?” Keith asked with a sigh.

“You! And Shiro! You two are a match made in heaven, I can’t believe one of you finally made a move!”

“Wait, that- that’s not- no! We aren’t together. This is just, hey don’t interrupt, let me explain!” Keith stuttered, pushing Romelle away to arm’s length. “We aren’t together, okay? It’s just… ugh this is a long story.”

“Start from the beginning then,” Allura suggested. “Here, let’s go to that seating area.”

They all sat down on the leather couches and the girls looked to Keith expectantly. Shiro could practically see the gears whirling in Keith’s brain as he tried to figure out what to say, when Lance decided to spare him.

“They’re fake dating,” he explained.

Romelle and Allura gave him a confused look.

“You remember Sven? Keith’s fake boyfriend?” Lance continued.

“Oh yes, I think I heard of him…” Allura thought aloud, “Isn’t he Swedish or something?”

“Yeah, that’s the guy!” Lance nodded. “So anyways, Keith’s mom is under the impression that Shiro is Sven so he’s coming home with us in a few days to meet her and the rest of our friends.”

“But why does she think that Shiro is Sven?” Romelle asked.

“Because  _ someone _ sent her a picture of us together and said that he was Sven,” Keith growled out, nudging Lance in the ribs with his elbow. Hard.

“So you are just pretending to be Sven?” Allura asked Shiro. “Instead of, you know, explaining that this is all a misunderstanding? Like a normal person would?”

Shiro shrugged. “She seemed happy, and I don’t want to let Krolia down. Besides, I wouldn’t mind meeting the rest of Keith’s friends. I’ve heard… interesting stories.”

“Interesting stories indeed,” Allura nodded. “I don’t know if I’m excited or terrified to meet them as well.”

“Okay but is no one noticing the problem here?” Romelle asked. “Namely, that Shiro is not Swedish? And not named Sven?”

“Oh we got that covered!” Lance leaned forward, sly smile on his face. “We got him a Facebook made with plenty of fake friends and family, and Shiro is working on learning how to be Swedish!”

“Oh, is that what was up with that friend request last night?” Allura asked. “I just assumed it was something stupid that Lance did. I guess I was right.”

“Ouch,” Lance winced.

“What do you mean learning how to be Swedish?” Romelle asked.

“Oh, you know,” Shiro shrugged, “Reading Wikipedia. Learning Swedish. That kind of stuff. Hey, watch this!” He furrowed his brow in concentration. He pointed over at a mother and daughter in the distance. “En kvinna och en flicka. Flickan dricker vatten.” He looked up at his friends, a pleased smile on his face.

“What?” Keith asked.

“I said, ‘a woman and a girl. The girl is drinking water’. Pretty cool, right?”

“Wow, that was actually Swedish!” Lance said, big smile on his face. “So cool, dude!”

Shiro accepted a fist bump from Lance.

“You know that this idea is still really stupid, right?” Allura asked.

“Yeah, we know,” Keith sighed. “Just go along with it, okay? Please?”

“Anything for you, bro,” Romelle agreed with a nod. “Besides, this is going to be hilarious.”

-x-x-x-

Today was the day that Shiro was dreading. Keith, Lance and Shiro were all free and they had agreed to meet up to work on his Instagram. He anxiously paced around his room, thinking of everything that could go wrong when he heard the sharp knock at his door. Taking a deep breath and straightening his shirt, Shiro opened the door.

“Guten tag my Swedish friend!” Lance bellowed, shoving the door open all the way.

“Lance, that’s German,” Keith muttered.

“Whatever, Sven is the Swedish one, not me. Speaking of, are you ready for the best photoshoot of your life?” Lance looked at Shiro expectantly.

“Um, no?” Shiro asked.

“Great! Now take off that shirt!” Lance bounded over and began to tug at the fabric. Shiro looked over to Keith for help, who was unhelpfully standing with his hands covering his face.

After some struggle, Shiro was finally freed from his cotton confinement, muscles on proud display.

“Are you sure about this?” Shiro asked.

“Positive,” Lance answered, pulling out a very expensive, very professional looking camera.

“Jesus, Lance, where did you get that from?” Keith asked, finally joining the two of them.

“I won it. Answered a survey on my Best Buy receipt.”

“Of course you did,” Keith sighed.

Lance busied himself opening curtains and turning lights on and off, figuring out the perfect lighting. Once he deemed everything perfect, he gestured Shiro to move against a wall. He handed Shiro the largest dumbbell that he could find and showed him the pose he wanted him to strike.

“Okay, steady… look towards the window a bit more… that’s it… raise your arm, yeah!” Shiro felt his face begin to redden as camera flash after camera flash assaulted the corner of his vision. He struck a few more poses before Lance finally gestured for him to put his shirt back on.

Looking at the display on the camera, Lance really did, surprisingly, know what he was doing. The pictures were artful, tasteful, and elegant while still being alluring. The shadows fell just right to accentuate every ripple in his muscles, and the way the light hit his eyes made his face look almost whimsical. Keith let out a low whistle beside him, which caused him to turn red, yet again.

“Next we need a picture of a protein shake. These are a staple of every fitness model,” Lance explained.

“I’m a fitness model now?” Shiro asked.

“Yes. Now lucky for us, I won some protein shake powder when I entered a contest at Dick’s Sporting Goods.” Lance got busy mixing up the powder in a glass. He then set about to making an arrangement on the table, showcasing both the protein shake and the container, showing the brand.

Shiro and Keith watched in amusement as Lance flitted about Shiro’s place, photographing random things. His stack of dumbbells. Shiro’s mug that was covered in a cat camo pattern. An inexplicable picture of a pair of sunglasses sitting atop a notebook with a pen at the side. They gave each other confused looks and raised eyebrows, occasionally asking each other if they had any idea what Lance was doing. In the end they just decided to trust him. They were both in over their heads, that’s for sure.

“Okay, that’s it for the indoor pictures, now let’s head outside! Coats, scarves, and mitts! Dress up, homies!” Lance shouted, pushing them both towards the door.

“Lance, it is 60 degrees,” Keith protested.

“Hey, you want a cute couples photo or not?” Lance asked.

Shiro blanched while Keith stuttered beside him.

Eventually they managed to pull together enough winter clothes between their two houses to make some sort of cozy winter scene, despite the lack of snow on the ground.

Lance took all sorts of photos. A picture from behind of Keith and Shiro on a bench, Keith’s head on Shiro’s shoulder. Them putting their fingers together to make a heart around the sun. The three of them putting their shoes in a circle around a chalk drawing of a heart they found on the ground. The two of them gazing into each other’s eyes under a lamppost once the sun had begun to set.

While the day had started out feeling awkward Shiro noticed that Keith was beginning to laugh more and more at each ridiculously stereotypical photo that Lance pushed them into, and Shiro was laughing alongside him. He looked down at Keith who was raking his hand through his hair, his face backlit by the setting sun. He looked up, noticing Shiro, and smiled. Shiro smiled back.

They both looked at Lance, startled, when they heard the camera shutter. Lance shrugged, “it looked like it would make a nice photo.”

When he showed it to them, Shiro had to agree.

When they returned home Shiro grudgingly gave Lance his Instagram account password, only making Lance promise that he would okay any posts with Shiro before submitting them.

Once the two boys had finally gone back home, Shiro curled up on the couch, doing a quick Duolingo lesson before bed. Soon he would be at Keith and Lance’s home town, meeting their family and friends. Sure, he was nervous. He tried to tell himself that it was just that he was scared he would mess something up and make things awkward for Keith, but deep down he knew there was something more causing the nerves.

As he dozed off, phone falling onto his chest, he couldn’t help but think how nice it will be to be dating Keith, even if just for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, this is Ardene, the second author of this fic! Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> I never thought that the reason I would start learning Swedish would be so I could use it in a fic where the character is also learning Swedish, but here we are. Sometimes writing just be like that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for a road trip! Also, Keith remembers why it should always be "driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cake hole".

Keith yawned and checked the time on his phone again. What on earth was Shiro even doing up there? He’d said he’d be back in a minute and that was 7 minutes ago. He was about to go up there and find out what’s up when his phone rang. Keith frowned at Romelle’s name. 

He answered the call but before he could say anything Romelle groaned out, “I hate everything.”

Keith pulled the phone away from his head so that he could sigh dramatically. He flopped down in the grass and put the phone on speaker so he could lay it on his chest. “Do I even want to know?”

“It’s Allura! She’s been doing her hair for the past half hour. I just want to get on the road!” Romelle sighed. “Speaking of which, is Lance even up yet?”

“Doubtful. You know how Lance is. I tried to wake him up and he shrieked at me and threw a shoe.” 

Romelle made an anguished noise.

“Didn’t you tell Allura that 5 hours in a car is going to ruin any hair style she does?” Keith sat up and put his phone in his lap so that he could better glare in the direction of Shiro' suite. 

“Many, many,  _ many _ , times. I told her that after more than 2 hours in a car everyone winds up looking like a goblin. She insisted that she’s got to make a good impression for mom.” 

“She does realise that mom’s known Lance for like 12 years, right? If you show up wearing weather appropriate clothes and not holding a box full of bees then you’ve made a good impression.” 

“Oh god, I forgot about the bees”. Keith could could picture Romelle face palming. Romelle sighed again. “Are you sure that we can't all go in one car? I thought we were going to suffer the Allurance show together.” Romelle was using her best whine and it's only due to over a decade of accumulated resistance that Keith didn't give in to her.

“Sorry Rom, but you know that 5 adults won't fit in that car. Especially not with how much luggage Lance brings.”

“You are the absolute worst brother.” There was some shuffling on the other end. “Oh my god she’s finally ready to go.”

“We'll be gone by the time you get here so good luck with Lance and I'll see you at home.” 

“Thanks.” Her reply was dripping with sarcasm and she didn't even bother to say goodbye before hanging up. 

Sighing Keith got up. He rolled his neck and did a few stretches. He had time to kill after all and he was going to be stuck in a car for 5 agonising hours. 

“Ready to go?”

Keith dropped his phone in surprise and spun around to find Shiro standing right behind him. “Jesus.” Keith put a hand over his heart. 

“Sorry.” Shiro ran a hand over the back of his neck nervously but didn’t back up. 

“Took you long enough.” Keith nearly slapped a hand over his mouth. God, why was he being so rude? 

Shiro winced. “Sorry, remembered I should probably dump the soy milk in my fridge and empty my garbages. Don’t want any small fuzzy life forms moving in while we’re away.”  

Keith made a face. Shiro was frustratingly perfect in almost everything. Except for keeping his fridge clean. There’d been more than a few times that Keith had found unspeakable horrors lurking in the far recesses of the fridge. 

“We should get on the road though. If we wait too long the girls might convince us to take Lance with us.” Keith pointed behind himself with his thumb.

This seemed to kickstart Shiro into motion. He grabbed his suitcase and started heading towards his car. “I love Lance but spending that much time in an enclosed space with him sounds…” Shiro shrugged.

Chuckling Keith grabbed his own bag and followed after Shiro. “It’s an experience alright.”

Shiro’s car was a nice sensible little black Kia Forte that was a few years old. He kept it mostly clean and it looked like he’d recently washed it. Keith grimaced. It was going to stay clean for about 1 minute on the highway. Honestly he was looking forward to making the trip in anything that wasn’t Romelle’s cramped little Honda. 

“So,” Keith said after they stowed their bags in the trunk. “Who’s driving.”

Shiro tossed Keith the keys. “Here, you drive. You know where we’re going anyway.”

Keith’s eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline. Shiro never let him drive his car. Keith having a lead foot and thinking speed limits were generally just a suggestion might have something to do with it.  

“Are you ok?” Keith couldn’t keep the worry out of his voice. 

“I’m fine!” Shiro let out a loud yawn and covered his mouth in embarrassment. “I just may have stayed up a little too late last night.”

Frowning Keith looked Shiro up and down. He did look tired. “Are you sure?” Keith asked just to be polite; he was however already inching towards the driver’s door and reaching for the door handle. There were very few things on this planet that would make him give up the keys at this point. 

Shiro smiled and reached for his own door. “Yah, I was hoping to at least get a short nap in.” 

“Works for me, this way you won’t be giving me shit about my driving.”

Paling slightly Shiro paused in getting into the car. “On second thought, give me the keys.”

Grinning Keith got into the driver’s seat. “Just get in, I’ll behave. I promise.”

Shiro muttered something under his breath but got in anyway. The two of them fiddled around, adjusting their seats and settling in for a long car ride.

“Do you need sunglasses?” Shiro popped open his glove compartment and several pairs fell out. “Huh.” He started picking them up and inspecting them.

“Why do you- you know what, never mind. No I don’t need sunglasses but I guess I know who to ask if I ever do.”

“I thought I only had a couple pairs in here…” Shiro selected one and shoved the rest back in the glove compartment. 

“So do you care what I listen to while you take a nap?” Keith was scrolling through his MP3 player and checking out his options. 

“Not really, as long as it’s not super loud. Or Adele.” 

Keith snorted. “Trust me, the last thing I want to do is spend 5 hours listening to Adele. That’s more your thing.” 

“I deserved that.” Shiro said with a chuckle. 

Settling on on Welcome to Nightvale Keith let Cecil's voice fill the car. “This good? Or do you want me to turn it down more?”

“It’s good.” Shiro shot him a thumbs up. 

By the time they hit the city limits Shiro was already snoring softly. Even though Shiro said it was quiet enough Keith turned down the volume a little more on his podcast. He felt sort of bad because he knew that Shiro had been up late on Duolingo again. 

The two of them had started Duolingo together at the beginning of last summer to learn Spanish so they could better troll Lance. Keith's interest had waned after a couple weeks but Shiro had kept at it for a while longer. Keith had honestly kind of forgotten about the app until Shiro mentioned it earlier in the week and, well, last night… 

Keith had accidentally fallen asleep on Shiro's couch while they were binging documentaries on Netflix. It wasn't that Keith was uninterested; it was more that he'd worked a particularly excruciating shift at work in which he'd accidentally told a woman on the phone he'd transfer her to the harmacy. This was the second time he’d done this. So he was 100% emotionally drained and ok yah he found Shiro's place to be one of the most relaxing places on the planet. He’d woken up sometime in the middle of the night with a blanket wrapped around him. He was just going to sneak downstairs but when he'd passed the kitchen he'd seen Shiro bent over his tablet mouthing words in Swedish. Keith didn’t know how to process this scene so he'd just slunk back to the couch, covered himself in the blanket, and gone back to sleep. 

When he reinstalled his Duolingo app this morning he noted that Shiro’ score in Swedish was alarmingly high for only having been at it for a week. 

Keith was so busy thinking about Shiro that he'd totally missed the last 10 or so minutes of his podcast. He groaned and rewound it. He needed to focus on the road. He could angst about how great of a guy Shiro was when they weren't going down the highway at 68 - crap, he hit the breaks - 62 miles an hour. 

-x-x-x-

By the time Keith had gotten through 2 episodes of Welcome to Nightvale he was starting to feel a little restless. Shiro had slept through the whole tripe, even when a particularly suicidal duck had nearly hit the windshield. 

His phone buzzed again in his pocket and Keith had half a mind to throw it out the window. But then he saw it, rest stop 1 mile. Thank god. 

“Hey Shiro,” Keith gently nudged Shiro’ shoulder. 

Shiro startled awake and knocked his sunglasses on the floor. 

“Crap sorry!” Keith kept glancing between the road and Shiro.

“No, it's good.” Shiro grabbed his sunglasses and shot Keith a blinding smile. “Must have been in a pretty deep sleep.”

“Yah, I had to turn the volume on my podcast up at one point because you were snoring so loud.” 

Shiro's cheeks went red. “Sorry, can't really help it you know..” he gestured at the scar on his nose and shrugged. 

Keith snorted. “Your snoring I can handle. You should hear Romelle, she could wake the dead with her snores.” Keith saw the exit sign and started signaling and slowing down. “Anyway, I need to stretch my legs and maybe grab a snack. You need anything?” 

“I’ll probably just get out with you.” Shiro started readjusting his seat since he had it partially reclined to better sleep in. 

The rest stop turned out to be a small town. The first thing when you entered was a convenience store with a diner attached. It looked a little weathered but overall clean. Keith was thankful, at least they probably wouldn't get murdered here. When they got out of the car his hair immediately started sticking to his neck. Ugh, so it was going to be like that today. It was too early in spring for it to be this hot. 

Shiro pulled the collar of his shirt away from his neck. “Didn't realise it was going to be this hot already. Maybe I should have packed more shorts…”

“Not like we're camping out in the boonies or anything. You can always buy new stuff when we get there.” 

Keith in a way was kind of relieved because Shiro was nearly as disastrous in the fashion department as he was in the kitchen. Sure Shiro looked good in almost anything but that still didn’t mean that he  _ should _ wear it. 

When they entered the convenience store they were immediately assaulted by blessedly cool air. Keith let out a small sigh. His content was short lived though since his phone buzzed again. He pulled it out of his pocket and gaped at the screen. 28 text messages. All from his sister. 

“Is everything Ok?” Shiro pretended not to be peering over his shoulder to read his phone screen.

“Probably just Romelle being dramatic?” He hoped. 

Keith scrolled to the earliest message and started reading. The messages started out with nice little messages like “have a nice trip!” and “drive safe!” but slowly descended into “they keep flirting with each other but pretending they don’t notice the other is flirting. Or maybe they are that oblivious. Send help.” 

Keith read the last few messages aloud. “They’ve started playing I Spy. Lance just said ‘I spy with my little eye something that is cute’. Allura has been trying to guess for 5 minutes and I want to scream that it’s her. Update, it was actually her dress. And now they’re discussing clothing in detail that I didn’t know Lance knew. Keith. I will give you all the money in my purse if you wait at the next rest stop and let me come with you. Please. Btw it’s $46.22.” 

Shiro glanced between the now dark phone screen and Keith. “Do we wait for her? She seems desperate.” 

Keith pocketed his phone and started looking around the convenience store at snacks. “She’ll be fine. Besides, they’re like an hour behind us. Do you really want to wait here for that long?” The girl behind the counter shot Keith a dirty look. He smiled at her apologetically. “Not that here isn’t nice? But I kinda just want to get home and see my mom and dog.” 

“Yah, ok.” Shiro still looked a little unsure of himself. 

Keith held up a bag of peanuts and grinned. “Come on, choose your snacks so we can get on the road.” 

It took them nearly 10 minutes but they eventually decided on snacks and had far more Mountain Dew Ice than two humans should conceivably drink on a roughly 3 hour road trip. Keith hadn’t been able to argue with Shiro’s sound logic of “It’s like Sprite, but with caffeine. Is there anything better than that?” 

Keith was just about to reach for his door when Shiro said, “Hey, wait up!” He jogged around the car as he fiddled with his phone. “We should take a picture for my Instagram!” 

Keith groaned but let Shiro arrange them for the picture. “You don’t need to do this…”

“But I checked it the other day and I’d gotten a few new followers. It was kind of exciting so I just thought it’d be nice to keep them updated. They seemed really excited to see more of my posts.”

Shiro now had his right arm slung around Keith’s shoulders and was holding out the phone with his left. Keith could see Shiro grinning at him on the phone screen so he forced a smile of his own and let Shiro take several selfies of them. 

When Shiro was satisfied he had a good picture he let them get into the car. Keith signed with content when he turned on the car and the air conditioning blasted him in the face. He’d just filled every cup holder he could reach with bottles of Mountain Dew when Shiro made a sound of distress. 

“Uhh Keith, how many followers is a normal amount on Instagram?” Shiro asked quietly.

Frowning Keith counted his own Instagram followers: Lance, Romelle, his mom, Shiro… Acxa maybe, and like 5 random people? “Like 10? I think Lance may have a few hundred?” Keith shrugged. “Why, how many do you have now?”

There was dead silence for several seconds as Shiro stared down at his phone screen, face unreadable. 

“Shiro?”

“Sixteen thousand.” Shiro whispered.

Keith’s mouth fell open. He fumbled his own phone out of his pocket and opened up Instagram to check for himself. 16,047 followers. “What the hell.” He said in wonder. 

Shiro was now clicking on various posts and reading the comments. “They think I’m really attractive and are excited to see a disabled fitness model.” He glanced at Keith. “Also they think my boyfriend is cute.”

Keith’s cheeks turned bright red. “Congrats? I guess?”

Shiro put his phone in his lap and buried his face in his hands. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“That’s usually how everyone feels after one of Lance’s plans gets out of hand.” Keith placed a hand on Shiro’s knee. “Look on the bright side, at least people think that Sven’s a real person now? I guess?”

Shiro looked over at Keith, fear still in his eyes.

“Ok, let’s just…” Keith sighed. “Let’s just get on the road and when we get to my mom’s place we can make Lance deal with this. He’s the one that started this mess in the first place.” 

“Yah, sure.” Shiro sighed and put his phone in his pocket. 

“You gonna be ok?” 

“Eventually.” 

Keith snorted. “In the scheme of Lance related incidents, this is actually pretty mild.” 

Shiro’s eyes widened. “So what you’re saying is it could be a lot worse.”

“Yah. Like the bee incident.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask.” 

“That fear is frankly warranted.” Keith chuckled. “So after I punched James Griffin in the face so hard I knocked out one of his teeth he was, quite understandably, not very fond of me. Lance, who was apparently my newly appointed best friend, wanted to find a way to teach James a lesson. I tried telling him that knowing James would have a false front tooth for the rest of his life was enough but well you know Lance… So anyway, fast forward a few months and I’ve just moved in with my mom. Lance shows up on our doorstep one morning holding a box. Mom of course has no idea who this kid is so she’s trying to get out of him what’s in the box. Lance drops the box and all of a sudden there are bees everywhere. Mom had the front door open so now there are bees in the house and Lance is screaming bloody murder.”

Shiro has a hand over his mouth and is shaking with silent laughter. 

“Lance wanted to leave the box on James’ doorstep and then ding dong ditch.”

“That’s a terrible idea.” Shiro choked out between laughs.

Laughing Keith nodded his head. “What can I say, we were like 9. Thankfully mom wasn’t that mad. There’s still a rule though that anything that Lance brings over has to be opened up outside and inspected for anything living before it can enter the house.” 

“That’s fair.” The smile on Shiro’s face was soft and affectionate. It made warmth bloom in Keith’s chest.

“So yah, sixteen thousand Instagram followers is much better than a house full of bees.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Shiro gestured towards the highway. “We should get going though?”

“Yah, definitely. Oh, do you have a music preference for the rest of the trip?”

Shiro’s eyes lit up and he pulled his MP3 player out of his pocket. “I almost forgot, I made a special playlist for our trip!” 

Keith wanted to point out that he’s the driver therefore driver picks the music and shotgun shuts his cake hole. He was mostly just asking to be polite. But how can he say no to that smile? 

“Go for it.” Keith forced a smile.

If Shiro noticed the forced smile he didn’t say anything. Instead he was excitedly hooking up his MP3 player. “It’s all Swedish music! I thought it would set the mood well.”

Keith refrained from groaning.

“But I didn’t know many Swedish bands so the library is a little limited.” 

Keith was pretty sure he just felt his soul leave his body. He knew what was coming, everyone that knows any music knew what was coming. There was only one band that everyone immediately knew as Swedish. 

“Shiro I-” Keith stopped, his mouth hanging open, as the first couple notes started playing. 

“Gimme, gimme, gimme, your love after midnight / Won't somebody help me chase these shadows away!” Sang a distinctly male voice. A very 80s power metal voice. That was preceded by an epic guitar riff and the disturbingly familiar melody of ABBA’s Gimme Gimme Gimme.

“It’s full of metal covers of ABBA songs!” Shiro said it with delight and with such a large smile on his face. He looked so proud. 

Keith didn’t know what to say so he sat there, his mouth still hanging open. 

Shiro’s face fell slightly and he started fidgeting. “I knew you liked metal so I figured this was a good compromise? I can turn it off if you like…”

“No!” It came out louder than Keith intended and he winced. “No, it’s fine. Just… I didn’t… wow, there really are metal covers of everything.” he laughed nervously. He already knew there were a tonne of metal covers out there of ABBA songs he’d just chosen to block them from his memory. He  _ hated _ ABBA.  

However, the way Shiro’s face lit up made the fact that he’d have to spend the next three or so hours listening to ABBA almost bearable.

“Who… who is this?” Keith asked weakly after several seconds of torture.

Shiro glanced at his player, “Yngwie Malmsteen. Would you like me to tell you which each band is as they come on?” He seemed way to excited about this prospect.

“Sure.” Keith said as he put the car into drive. The sooner he got on the road the sooner this torture would be over. And maybe they could get talking about the bands and thus drown out the music.   

It took 7 excruciating tracks (including 3 versions of Gimme Gimme Gimme) for something miraculous to happen. 

“Through the gates of hell / As we make our way to heaven / Through the Nazi lines / Primo Victoria”

Keith nearly drove off the road as he looked over to Shiro. “Is this??”

Shiro grinned back. “I knew that Sabaton was one of your favourites so I mixed some of their music in there too. They are Swedish after all.” 

Grip loosening on the steering wheel Keith couldn’t help the small smile that was tugging at the corners of his lips. Ok the ABBA was pretty horrible but the fact that Shiro had remembered about one of his favourite bands, well, it just made his heart a little bit warm. 

“So are there any other surprises I should know about in here?” Keith asked.

Shiro quirked an eyebrow. “Well, it wouldn’t be a surprise then, would it?”

Keith smiled back. “I guess not.”

Nearly an hour passed by with the two of them casually chatting about music. There were a few surprise appearances of Amon Amarth, Månegarm, Hammerfall, and Opeth to break up the ABBA. And Keith was pretty close to deeming this the most relaxing car trip of his life, even including the ABBA.

Keith’s phone started ringing. Shiro reached for it but Keith shook his head. “It’s Lance’s ringtone. He’s probably just going to be annoying.”

“Are you sure?” Shiro’s hand stayed hovering over the phone. 

“Positive. This has been the most peaceful car trip of my life. Let me enjoy it.” The call eventually went to voicemail and Lance hung up without leaving a message. “See, it probably wasn’t important.”

A few seconds later Shiro’s phone started ringing. Only it was connected to the bluetooth of his car and before Keith could stop him Shiro was answering the call. 

“There would be no sadness / If we were super gay ( we were super gay) / Just unicorns and magic” Lance and Romelle were yell singing into the phone. 

“Fuck you guys!” Keith yelled at them. 

Romelle started cackling but Lance continued to belt out the lyrics to Ninja Sex Party’s “If We Were Gay”

“I don’t…” Shiro looked at Keith completely lost to what was even going on.

“How do you turn this off?” Keith gestured wildly at the console.

It was too late though, Lance was loudly yelling “dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick-”

Shiro hung up the call. 

“Oh thank fuck.” Keith sighed and relaxed back into his seat.

“I’ve never hung up on someone before that wasn’t a telemarketer.” Shiro said in wonder.  

“Yah well, if you know Lance long enough you’ll get used to it.” Keith wanted to bury his face in his hands but he was driving. 

“What were they even singing?” 

“Ninja Sex Party.”

Shiro’s eyes widened. “Who would even call their band that…?”

“Well, the band is-”

Shiro’s phone started ringing again. Both of them stared at in horror. It was obvious that it was paining Shiro to not immediately answer his phone but on the other hand he’d now been exposed to the full horrors of Lance on long car rides.

“Who is it?” keith asked cautiously.

Shiro glanced down at his phone screen. “Allura.”

Glancing at Shiro Keith shrugged. “You might be safe.”

Taking a deep breath Shiro answered the call. 

“I’m so sorry!” Allura said as soon as they picked up. “I tried to stop them but they’re in the front seat and I couldn’t reach.”

There was still the muffled sound of Lance and Romelle sing-yelling along to Cool Patrol in the background.

“It’s ok, Allura.” Shiro said.

“Honestly not the worst thing he’s done to me on a car ride.” Keith groaned.

“I genuinely fear for you.” Allura let out a sigh. “This all seemed fun at the beginning but I’m beginning to see why you two were so excited to be on your own for this.”

“At least you’re only getting subjected to the Ninja Sex Party playlist.” Keith nodded solemnly. 

“There are…” Allura trailed off for several seconds. “I suppose there could be worse playlists.”

“That’s impossible, I can’t make bad playlists!” Lance yelled in the background.

“You should ask him about Tricia Blake.” Keith nodded. Shiro raised an eyebrow but Keith only mouthed “later” to him. “We should let you go though, Allura. If they get to be too much make them pull over and buy you ice cream or something. Tell them it’s not a true road trip until you have dessert at some sketchy diner and find a rest stop bathroom you’re pretty sure someone’s been murdered in.

“That sounds… charming.” Allura said and Keith could just picture her wrinkling her nose. 

“Good luck, Allura! Have fun!” Shiro said. 

“You too!” Allura hung up.

A few seconds later the radio kicked back in and Keith was once again subjected to “Summer Night City” performed by Therion. 

“So, Tricia Blake?” Shiro raised an eyebrow. 

“It was the 9th grade and Lance was obsessed with Tricia. Mostly he just was a total disaster around her, used a lot of cheesy pickup lines. It was kind of sad to watch. Eventually she took pity on him and they went on a date. Well she said they would go on a date but she showed up like 20 minutes late with another guy and said she actually would rather go on a date with him.”

“That’s… that’s really harsh.” 

“She was… not a nice person. Anyway Lance played Alanis Morisette’s ‘You Outta Know’ on repeat for three weeks straight. Even hearing mention of the song gives me a migraine. Honestly it all worked out in the end though. Tricia wound up going to prison for stabbing her ex boyfriend when she saw him dating a new girl.”

“Jesus.” Shiro grimaced. “He really dodged a bullet there.”

“No kidding.” 

The song switched to Hammerfall’s “Hearts on Fire.” Keith grinned and glanced over at Shiro. “I’ll bet you’ll never guess who’s in the music video for this song.”

“Ok you got me, who was in the video?” 

“The Swedish women’s curling team from the 2010 Olympics.”

Shiro’s eyes absolutely lit up. “That is the coolest thing I have ever heard.”

Keith laughed. “I don’t know about the coolest, but yah it’s pretty awesome.” 

“I guess I should have done more research into metal.” Shiro sighed. “It seems like there’s a lot more to it than I thought…”

“Well,” Keith’s grin widened, “this is one thing I do know a lot about and can fill you in on.” 

“I’d love that.” The way that Shiro said it was so soft and tender that it made Keith’s heart flutter. So what could he do but eagerly vomit out every single bit of metal trivia he knew. 

-x-x-x-

They made good time and hit the city limits just after one. Keith’s stomach was simultaneously growling with hunger and churning with nerves. Now that he was driving through familiar streets it finally hit him that he was taking Shiro home to meet his mom. Except it wasn’t Shiro; it was Shiro with a fake accent pretending to be another Shiro-shaped man named Sven. 

Inhaling sharply Keith pulled over in front of a random house. Jesus Christ what was he thinking???

“Uhh Keith?” Shiro tentatively laid a hand on Keith’s shoulder.

“I think we made a mistake.” Keith blurted out and looked at Shiro, eyes wide. “My mom is smart. Like really smart. She’s going to know we’re lying.” He dropped his face against the steering wheel and accidentally hit the horn. 

“Keith.” Shiro gently nudged Keith’s shoulder but he stayed slumped against the steering wheel. “Come on, buddy. Look at me.” 

Stifling a groan Keith looked up at Shiro. The look Shiro was giving him was so intense that Keith completely forgot how to talk. His mouth just dropped open and he’s pretty sure some strangled sound came out. 

Shiro gently grabbed Keith by both shoulders and turned him so they were better facing each other. “We’ve got this, Keith. I’ve done the research and it’s not like I’m a different person. Sure I’ll have a fake accent but deep down it’s still me. If there is one promise that I will never break to my dying breath is that I will never purposely let you down.” 

Inhaling sharply Keith lunged forward and tried his best to pull Shiro into his arms. It didn’t work very well as both of them were still wearing their seatbelts but they tried their best. 

“Thank you.” Keith whispered.

“Always.” Shiro’s breath ghosting over his ear made Keith shudder. 

They stayed like that for several seconds until Keith happened to glance out the window and locked eyes with an old lady on the sidewalk that was eyeing them suspiciously. 

“We should umm…” Keith gently pulled himself out of Shiro’s arms. “We should get going.” 

“There’s no rush.” Shiro smiled kindly.

“No, some lady is giving us the stink eye.”

Shiro spun in his seat and looked at the lady. He shot her a blinding smile and waved. She continued to glare back.

“Well that’s completely unnerving.” Shiro turned back to Keith and made a face. “Yah, let’s get out of here.”

Keith pulled back out onto the road. They drove in silence until Keith pulled into the driveway of a house at edge of the city. 

The house was two story with a long driveway and detached garage. There was a swinging bench on the porch sitting in front of the picture window. It was cute and despite Keith’s panic only a few minutes ago he felt nothing but calm now. 

Keith looked over and saw Shiro glancing around the house, eyes alight with excitement. 

“You ready?” Keith gripped the steering wheel tightly. Ok maybe not all his nerves were gone. 

“Yah.” Shiro shot him a brilliant smile and ok yah Keith could do this. Probably.

They grabbed their bags from the trunk and headed up the driveway. Keith was just about to reach for the door when it swung open and Krolia pulled him into a bone crushing hug.

“Mom!” He tried to sound annoyed but he couldn’t hide his giant smile. 

“Keith! It's so good to see you.” she kissed the top of Keith's head before she pulled away and looked Shiro up and down.

To his credit Shiro looked remarkably put together for someone meeting Krolia for the first time. Over the years Keith had seen more than one person absolutely wilt under Krolia's gaze. He'd even had the luxury of watching a former boyfriend of Romelle’s burst into tears. 

“Hi, I'm Taka- Sven.” Shiro said in his fake Swedish accent.” I mean my name on my driver's license is Takashi Shirogane but everyone calls me Sven. It’s the pleasure of the meeting to you.” keith grimaced at the mangled sentence but Shiro just kept on smiling at Krolia. Shiro even stuck out his hand. His prosthetic hand. He always offered the other hand for handshakes so this was the true sign of how nervous he was. 

Krolia's eyebrows rose nearly into her hairline. She looked Shiro up and down a couple times before smiling and taking the proffered hand. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Sven. You know,” She gave Keith a  _ look, _ “I was starting to think you were someone Lance made up.” She looked back at Shiro and smile again. “I'm glad to know that wasn’t the case.” 

“Jesus.” Keith scrubbed a hand over his face. 

“No, I am very real.” Shiro shot Krolia another blinding smile. 

Krolia returned the smile. It was almost surreal watching the two of them stand there. Maybe she wasn't trying to intimidate Shiro because he was one of the few people taller than her? Lack of training and prosthetic arm aside maybe Krolia respected the fact that Shiro could probably at least give her a challenge in a fight? He was buff as fuck after all.

Or, a wild thought appeared, maybe his mom genuinely liked Shiro? 

Completely oblivious to Keith's inner turmoil Krolia looked between the two of them and asked, “So, you two can either share the guest room or Keith’s old room.”

“Keith's room will be fine!” Shiro said with perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm. 

“Alright then, go get your stuff settled and I'll make some sandwiches. I'm assuming you two haven't eaten yet? Oh and your sister just texted that the rest of them just stopped for lunch on the road so they'll still be a couple hours.” 

“Sandwiches sound great!” Shiro said. 

Krolia started heading  into the house but paused in the door. “Oh, do you have any food allergies? My son has been a little stingy with divulging information about you.”

“No, but I am lactose intolerant.” Shiro said it almost solemnly. 

“Gotcha.” Krolia gave him a thumbs up then headed into the house. 

Keith grabbed Shiro by the arm and hissed. “Why did you agree to share my old room?”

Shrio raised his eyebrows and whispered back. “Because it’s your old room? I thought you’d want to use it?” 

“It only has a double bed! Do you even fit on a double bed on your own?” Keith gestured wildly at Shiro’s body.

“Umm… not really? Diagonally sometimes?”

“And now we have to share a double bed!” Keith’s whisper yells were quickly divulging into actual yells.

Shiro’s eyes went wide and he managed a weak “Oh…” 

“Yah,” Keith deflated slightly. 

“We could ask to use the other room…?”

“No!” Keith’s eyes widened. “My mom was special forces. You can’t show weakness in front of her, she will destroy you! We’ll make do.” He grabbed his own suitcase and headed into the house, hoping that Shiro would follow him. 

Keith led the two of them up the stairs and into his childhood room. It was only when he was faced with the emo band posters on his wall that he realised that he may have made yet another mistake. Oh well, it was too late now. As soon as Shiro was in the room Keith closed the door so at least as long as they talked quietly Shiro didn’t need to use his ridiculous (yet strangely attractive) fake Swedish accent. 

“Wow.” Shiro was glancing around the room, mouth slightly open. “You…” Shiro’s eyes landed on a Children of Bodom poster and he squinted at it. 

“Were an angsty emo kid? Yah.” Keith was slowly inching towards his dresser hoping that he could maybe swipe all the makeup still sitting there into a drawer without Shiro noticing. 

“Well, I was going to say had very eclectic tastes. I mean sure I knew about the angsty emo kid phase, Romelle and Lance love to bring that up, but like…” Shiro gestured at Keith’s shelves, “Gundams? D&D books?”Shiro stepped closer to look at some novel spines and Keith quickly opened the top drawer of his dresser and swept as much of the makeup as he could in there. “Young Adult vampire novels?” Shiro turned and smiled at Keith. “You’re kind of a nerd.” 

“I’m a physics major! And, so are you! So you’re one to talk.” 

Shiro held up his hands. “Not saying I’m not, because yah… but you always want people to think you’re some big scary badass when really you’re-”

“A nerd.” Keith sighed.

“Sweet.” Shiro smiled.

Keith’s mouth dropped open. “I uhh,” his cheeks went red. “We should put our suitcases in the closet and then go downstairs before my mom thinks we’re getting up to anything.” Keith walked over to the closet, flung it open and then was hit with yet another wave of regret. He quickly jammed his suitcase in but fuck it wasn’t tall enough to hide the poster. Why hadn’t he left clothes in this closet? There were a couple shirts hanging at the far end but he didn’t think they’d be enough to block anything.

“Is that Ricky Martin?” Shiro peered over Keith’s shoulder.

“Yah. Romelle put it there after I came out. She thought it was hilarious.”

Shiro chuckled. “Sorry Keith, but I’m inclined to side with Romelle on this one.”

“Traitor.” Keith turned and grabbed for Shiro’s bag but Shiro pushed it just out of his reach with his foot. “Hey, give me that!”

“Keith.” Shiro gently placed both hands on Keith’s shoulders. “It’s going to be ok.”

“Nothing’s even the matter, Shiro!” Keith’s voice steadily rose in volume with each word. Ok maybe yah there was something the matter but standing almost in his closet, Ricky Martin judging his every move, was not where Keith was going to admit it. 

Shiro frowned slightly. “You’re tense.” His left hand gently started to squeeze and massage Keith’s shoulder. “You have been since we set out this morning.”

“Yah, well, I’m lying to my mom and starting to think that I’ve made some mistakes.”

Sighing Shiro pulled Keith into a hug. Keith struggled for a fraction of a second but melted against Shiro’s firm chest. “We went over this in the car, but I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it. I will always be there for you, Keith. No matter what. No matter how ridiculous the situation.” 

Something caught in Keith’s throat. He managed a strained “thanks” before pulling himself back enough so he could look up into Shiro’s eyes. “I need to go to the bathroom. I’ll meet you downstairs.” Keith slipped out of Shiro’s grasp and made a break for the bathroom. Once he had the bathroom door firmly locked behind himself he whipped out his phone and hammered out a quick text to Romelle. 

Keith: I think i made a mistake

Romelle: Wat did u do

Keith: I think i have feelings for shiro

Romelle: No shit

Keith let out a dramatic sigh and slid to the floor against the bathroom door. 

Keith: Like romantic feelings or whatever but like i don’t fall in love so idk what this is

Romelle: Listen bro. It doesn’t matter if youre in love or not. You love that boy. He loves you. Please ask him out on a date already. 

Keith: How do you know he loves me???

Romelle: He went along with your stupid plan to be your fake boyfriend

Keith: But he’s just being a good friend!!

Romelle: Omg i cant do this now. We are like 2 hours out. Just like act normal until i get home. Well normal for u

Keith sighed and let his head drop against the door with a thunk. What the hell has he gotten himself into?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got out of hand. So out of hand. But I had fun writing it so I hope you all enjoyed reading it. :3 
> 
> Both Ardene and I are huge metalheads. We didn't know any Swedish music besides metal so *shrugs* 
> 
> Music featured in this chapter:  
> [Yingwei Malmsteen - Gimme Gimme Gimme](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XsERirJLZU)  
> [Sabaton - Primo Victoria](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZm4zseMok0)  
> [Ninja Sex Party - If We Were Gay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99njZJod2c)  
> [Ninja Sex Party - Cool Patrol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tW0G9XWaj0)  
> [Therion - Summer Night City](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAQwSGGKNhg)  
> [Alanis Morissette - You Otta Know](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPcyTyilmYY)  
> [Hammerfall - Hearts on Fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAtBVRFD_Zg)
> 
> Bonus tracks:  
> [Månegarm - Odin Owns Ye All](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqfk7oBMsW4)  
> [Amon Amarth - Twilight of the Thunder God](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edBYB1VCV0k)  
> [Opeth - Burden](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF68P5N1RJM)  
> [ Children of Bodom - Sixpounder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09KScSe4hIc)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro's confused about a lot of things, namely how his life got so complicated. And salad.

After Keith had ran to the washroom so abruptly (really, it was understandable, he had drunk a  _ lot _ of Mountain Dew and caffeine made Shiro have to pee really bad, honestly) Shiro decided to walk back downstairs to see if Keith’s mom needed any help with lunch. Not that he  _ should _ help, but still, it would be polite to ask. She didn’t know about his culinary talents, after all.

His plans were dashed however, literally, when a large bundle of fur bounded into him at the bottom of the stairs.

“Whoa!” Shiro yelled as he was plowed over, landing on his metal arm. Good, he wouldn’t bruise. “Hey, Kosmo, I’m guessing,” Shiro said, barely remembering to put his accent in place, patting the dog on the head as he enthusiastically licked Shiro’s face.

“Sorry about that, he just woke up from a nap,” Krolia called from the kitchen. “He’s always pretty restless after, and having a stranger just makes him even more hyper.”

“It’s alright,” Shiro laughed, scratching Kosmo behind the ears. He let out a small “oof” as Kosmo flopped down on top of him. Well, it looked like he wouldn’t be moving for a little while. He accepted his fate.

As he gave Kosmo a belly rub he gave him a good look over. To say he was a dog would be understating things. He resembled more of a wolf, and he was huge. Shiro didn’t know much about dogs, being more of a cat person himself, but even he could tell Kosmo was kind of a strange dog.

“What breed is he?” Shiro called to Krolia.

“Dunno, dog,” Krolia called back. “Something big.”

Shiro shrugged. Not like he would know the difference between any of them anyways.

Shiro was startled as the weight suddenly lifted off his stomach. “Hey, boy!” Keith shouted, bounding down the stairs, Kosmo meeting him part way to greet him. “Good to see you!” Keith wrapped Kosmo up into a giant hug.

Shiro sat up, smiling as he watched Keith ruffle the dog’s fur. Yeah, maybe he’d be okay adopting a dog someday. Surely Keith would want one, considering how much he loved Kosmo. Whose dog was he anyways? Did he belong to Krolia, or would Keith be taking him with him when he graduated?

Shiro blanched. What was he thinking? Was he seriously just considering a future with Keith? Yikes. He shook his head to clear it. Keep it together, Takashi!

“Okay, boys, go wash your hands. Lunch is ready,” Krolia called, smiling down at Keith holding Kosmo.

“Yes, ma’am,” Keith smiled back at her. Shiro joined him in washing the dog slobber off their hands and sat down at the table. In front of each of them was a chicken sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup. Without thinking Shiro whipped out his phone and began taking pictures of his meal.

Once he had a satisfactory picture, he put his phone away, and finally looked up to see Krolia staring at him, spoon half-way to her mouth.

“Oh, sorry, it’s for my Instagram,” Shiro explained sheepishly.

Krolia let out a shrug of acceptance. He assumed that living with Keith and Romelle and knowing Lance so well, it’s probably not the strangest thing she’s seen.

Shiro almost expected a bombardment of questions from Krolia since, as she had explained, Keith had been a little stingy with details about him. Or Sven. Whatever. However, an interrogation never came. Their lunch passed in peaceful conversation; Keith talking about his classes and professors and sharing some embarrassing stories of things that Lance did. Shiro almost thought he was in the clear, but once they had all finished Krolia looked to him with a disarmingly sweet smile.

“Keith, dear, why don’t you clean the dishes. Sven, have some tea. What kind would you like? I have everything. Really.”

Okay, Shiro thought, he’s got this. He studied this. “Well, my favourite is Söderblandning, but I haven’t seen that since being in Sweden. Black tea would be fine.”

“Now, now, dear,” Krolia said, smile widening, “I told you I have everything, didn’t I?”

Shiro’s jaw dropped open as Krolia reached up to a shelf and pulled out a bag of Söderblandning. No way.

“Wow… you were right,” Shiro squeaked out. “How did you get that?”

“The internet,” Krolia said with a small raise of her shoulders. “I just wanted you to feel at home, dear.”

“How much did you pay in shipping for it to get here this fast?” Keith squawked from at the sink.

“Not important. Now shove over, I need to get some water in the kettle.”

Once the water was boiled and the tea was poured, Krolia led Shiro to sit on a couch in the living room, leaving Keith alone with a mountain of dirty dishes. Shiro had a sinking suspicion that Krolia had purposely let the dishes pile up to keep Keith busy.

“So, Sven. Tell me about yourself,” she said, putting her teacup down daintily on a coaster.

Shiro’s mind blanked. How does one even talk about themself, let alone talk about themself when they’re pretending to be someone else?

“Well, I am from Sweden,” he started. “I came to America to study because I wanted to travel.” Good, safe start.

“Why come down here?” Krolia asked in response. “Why not New York or California or somewhere exciting?”

“It’s hot here, and Sweden is very cold,” Shiro blurted out. “I mean, in my home of Västerås, the weather is very unpredictable. Depending where the air is moving from winter is very cold, or can be mild, but usually is very cold and has much snow. Summer can be warm but many sudden rain. The weather here seemed nice.”

Krolia nodded, sipping her tea. “What do you study here?”

Shiro opened his mouth to answer but the words stuck in his throat as he finally looked up at the wall behind Krolia. Instead of a nice painting or maybe a rack of decorative spoons or something, hanging on the wall was a very large collection of knives.

Sure, they were very nice knives, well made and most quite decorative. Still, this was a shitload of knives.

Shiro finally remembered that Krolia had asked him a question and answered on autopilot, “I am in the same programme as Keith. I mean, I started in education, but changed my major. Now I study with him.”

“Why did you quit education?” Krolia asked with a raised brow.

“I just… I needed a change,” Shiro answered honestly.

Krolia hummed in acknowledgement. “When did you start seeing my son?”

Shiro felt his face go pale. Did they discuss this? They must have discussed this. Why couldn’t he remember? How long had Sven existed for? Needing to answer he finally blurted out, “Uhh, it is hard to say. We have been friends for a time, but it just sort of… happened? Like one day you look at someone and realise you love them, you know?”

Krolia grinned widely. “And how long have you known you love him?”

Shiro thought for a minute. “I don’t know,” he finally said.

Why didn’t he lie? That would have been much easier. But it was the truth. He didn’t know when he started loving him. Is that what this is? Is it love?

“I don’t know, but it’s definitely been for a while.”

Krolia nodded, still smiling. “Relationships can be confusing, and sometimes overwhelming. But I think you have a good head on your shoulders. It doesn’t matter when or how it started, it matters where it goes.” She leaned forward to put a hand on Shiro’s knee. “Sven, I am going to give you some advice. It’s something someone told me once. When you are in a relationship, it is most important to remember that whenever you feel like fighting, it is you two against the problem, not you two against each other.”

Shiro sucked in a breath. It was like in the blink of an eye he could see the root of everything that went wrong with him and Adam. In the end it was always them against each other. With Keith, however, even as just friends, as long as he’d known him he had always been beside him, tackling each problem with him as they came. Together.

“And remember,” Krolia continued, causing Shiro to look up, “If you do start to fight  _ against _ him, I have a lot of knives, and I know how to use all of them. Exceptionally well.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shiro squeaked.

“Good.” Krolia released his knee, smiling again. “I’m going to go help Keith dry the dishes.

Shiro let his head sink against the back of the couch once she had left. If he thought Keith was a force of nature, his mother was a hurricane.

-X-X-X-

After dinner, Shiro found himself walking with Keith through the local grocery store, pushing a cart as Keith skimmed over the list of groceries his mom had given him.

“Is this all for tomorrow’s barbeque?” Shiro asked, Swedish accent securely in place. They figured that he should keep up the charade as long as he’s back home with Keith, just in case.

“Nah, all we’re supposed to bring is the potato salad. I think mom just didn’t want to yell at the people trying to sign you up for the store credit card, there’s everything on this list,” Keith replied with a sigh.

“Okay, maybe let’s start with the potato salad ingredients? Since that’s something we need urgently?”

“Sounds good,” Keith shrugged.

“What’s in potato salad anyways? Like, potatoes and lettuce, of course.”

Shiro noticed Keith had stopped walking and slowed down before finally stopping and turning to look at him. “What?” he asked.

Keith was giving him an incredulous look. “Now just  _ what _ do you think is in potato salad?” he asked.

“Uhh… potatoes? And salad?”

“Dude, have you ever eaten potato salad before?”

Shiro thought back on it. Sure he’d heard the name before. I mean, didn’t someone once make a Kickstarter to make potato salad? But he couldn’t recall ever eating it. Or being in the general vicinity of it. Maybe he had, but didn’t recognise it. He finally settled on just shrugging his shoulders.

“Okay, I have to ask,” Keith continued, “what do you think is in macaroni salad?”

“Like, macaroni and lettuce? No? Stop looking at me like that,” Shiro squawked, “I don’t like salad, okay? I avoid anything with salad in the name!”

“Shi-Sven, how is it you’re so smart but also so fucking stupid?” Keith asked.

“I’m a simple man who likes simple food, none of this weird salad-not-salad bullshit! Who even needs all these types of salad anyways?”

“Shiro?”

Shiro and Keith both paused their argument in order to turn to the voice that had just called his name. Standing in front of them was none other than Matthew Holt.

“Matt?” Shiro asked, eyes wide. “Why are you here?”

“Why am I here?” Matt asked, “Why are  _ you _ here? Also, you know Keith? Why are you talking with a weird accent? I just- what?”

“Oh no,” Keith whispered.

“Oh, uh, I just… wow. This is weird,” Shiro said with a nervous laugh. “I will explain everything, but for now, please call me Sven. I am from Sweden. Also, dating Keith. I mean,” Shiro leaned in close to Matt, whispering to his ear, “we are pretending to date? Okay, I know it’s weird, and probably more than a little crazy. But just, like, go with it.”

Matt stood with his mouth hanging open, trying to process what he just heard. Finally he managed to ask, “but why?”

Eventually they decided the best thing they could do would be to abandon their shopping cart in the middle of an aisle (hey, at least it was empty and not full of perishable items) and sit in Shiro’s car so they could talk with some amount of privacy.

“You know, we could have just talked in the store. You aren’t going to run into anyone you know, it’s a big city,” Matt grumbled.

“Uh, we just ran into you, you know,” Keith shot back.

“Okay, guys, let’s just, get this sorted out,” Shiro sighed, dropping the accent.

“How do you two even know each other?” Keith asked.

“We went to the same university for a while,” Shiro explained. “Adam received an internship at our current university so that’s why we wound up moving. Didn’t want to try the whole long distance thing.”

“So you two go to school together now?” asked Matt.

“Yeah. He lives in the fourplex above me and Lance,” Keith replied.

“Huh, small world.”

Shiro then went on to explain the whole mess of the situation, from his breakup with Adam (excluding the whole part about Keith and the Adele) to Lance coming up with the whole idea of Sven, to their predicament of Shiro pretending to be Sven.

“Oh my god, you know neither of you ever have normal problems, right?” Matt asked, still suppressing a giggle. “And don’t worry, I won’t tell Katie. Even if she is one of your best friends and deserves to laugh at you.”

“Wait, you’re friends with Katie? Matt’s sister? I thought you’d told me about all your friends,” Shiro asked.

“Pidge,” Keith sighed. “I call her Pidge.”

“Ohh. That explains a lot. Like why there are two people on the planet who eats ketchup on grapes.”

“Yeah, same person.”

They were interrupted by Keith’s phone suddenly ringing. He fished the object out of his pocket, scowled, and said, “I’ll be right back. It’s Lance.” He opened the door and left the car, his “hello?” muffled as he slammed the door.

“Sooooo,” Matt drawled.

Shiro did not trust the look on his face. “What?”

“You and Keith, huh?”

“You know it’s just pretend, right?”

Matt let out a loud laugh. “Oh, buddy. Don’t tell me you don’t realise. Keith is, like, exactly your type. I’m honestly a little mad that I didn’t think to try to introduce you two before.”

“What do you mean my type?” Shiro spluttered.

“He’s like a cactus. Hard and prickly on the outside, nice and sweet on the inside. And if you hug him he will probably stab you.”

Shiro gave him and unimpressed look.

“Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t like him, right? I’ve been sitting in a car with you two for like ten minutes and I already can’t stand the tension.”

Shiro looked out the window at Keith, who was several feet away and seemed to be yelling at Lance for some reason. “Don’t you dare tell him,” he finally admitted.

“Oh hell no, I’m staying out of this. But I’m just saying that you should.”

Shiro let his head fall back against the seat. Why couldn’t things ever just be easy?

-X-X-X-

When they returned, they were a little surprised to find Lance in Keith’s kitchen, chatting with Allura, Romelle and Krolia.

“Why are you here?” Keith asked, glaring at Lance.

“What? I can’t say hi to your mom? Also I had to make sure that the princess here had adequate sleeping arrangements,” he said, smiling at Allura, who giggled back at him.

Krolia suddenly stood up. “Law and Order is on. Make sure you put the groceries away.”

“Still can’t keep mom away from her crime shows,” Romelle rolled her eyes as Krolia stalked away.

“So Sven, where are you sleeping?” Allura asked. “I saw only one spare bedroom. Are you staying with Keith?”

“No way,” Lance snorted, “Keith’s bed is tiny. I don’t think even Sven alone would fit on it.”

“I am staying with Keith,” Shiro admitted.

Lance stared. “Seriously? Okay, no, wait. I’ll help you. Let’s figure this out.” He fished up a piece of scrap paper and a pen and began drawing, brow creased in concentration.

“What are you doing?” Keith asked, trying to peer over his shoulder.

“Figuring out some sleeping arrangements,” Lance muttered, pen flying over the page.

“What?” Keith asked, but was ultimately ignored.

Once Lance had finally finished his masterpiece, he let out a little “a-ha!” and presented his work.

“So. Here’s some solutions. Option one- both sleep side by side, flat on their backs. As you can see, they won’t fit, and probably someone will fall off. If you do this method I recommend Keith sleeps on the right, since his night stand is on that side so if someone falls off he will hit his head and die, not Sven.”

“Hey!” Keith glared.

“Option two, much like option one, they both sleep on their backs but on top of each other. I recommend Keith sleeps on top for this, since Sven would probably suffocate him. Actually, on second thought, either way is fine. Keith could go on the bottom too.”

Keith elbowed Lance in the ribs.

“Option three,” Lance choked out, “spooning. But I think they’re both too awkward for that, so that’s out.”

Keith simply rolled his eyes to that one.

“Option four- I call this one the ‘Back Breaker’. Basically, instead of sleeping across the length of the bed, you sleep across the width. You both have plenty of room to yourselves, but you will mostly be hanging off the bed. Don’t do this, I don’t know enough about anatomy to know if you would die. Now option five-”

“Lance,” Keith finally interrupted, “enough. We’ll make it work, just… no more stupid diagrams, okay? I can’t take this.”

Keith finally gave up on his friend and began putting away the groceries.

“Aww, but I liked number five,” Lance pouted.

“You had some very… interesting ideas,” Allura smiled at him, covering his hand with her own. “Some I never even thought of. Why don’t you show me the rest?”

Romelle made a gagging gesture to Shiro before she also got up to help Keith put away groceries. Not wanting to sit there alone, and certainly not wanting to hear more about how Lance thought he and Keith should sleep together, he picked up a bag and began shoving perishables into the fridge.

-X-X-X-

Shiro followed Keith up the stairs, letting him lead the way to his old bedroom. As the door creaked open, Keith suddenly stopped, Shiro almost running into him.

“Everything okay?” Shiro asked.

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Keith replied. “Just… my mom apparently got you a gift.”

Keith finally entered the room, and when Shiro followed he saw what Keith meant. Sitting in the middle of the bed was a very large giftbag, complete with that fancy metallic tissue paper and more ribbon than a gift should ever need. In front of it was a note that said “Sven” in calligraphy.

Shiro looked to Keith, who mouthed “open it” to him, concern evident on his face.

Shiro approached the bed and reached out to the bag with shaking hands. He pulled out the tissue paper and unceremoniously dumped the contents onto the bed.

Inside was fourteen boxes of condoms. Large, extra large, flavoured, ribbed, warming. “There’s even glow in the dark ones, who needs that?” Keith asked, poking at one of the boxes.

There was also eight different bottles of lube. Shiro watched as Keith opened up a bottle of lube that said it was ‘Mint Chocolate Gelato’ flavoured. “Whoa, this actually tastes good! My mom must have gone all out,” Keith exclaimed, eyes wide. “Here, try some!”

Keith shoved the bottle into Shiro’s face, who managed to squeak out, “No, I’m good, thanks.”

Keith shrugged and picked up the last thing in the pile that they hadn’t investigated.

In Keith’s hands was a book about sexually transmitted diseases, which talked about them in very graphic detail.

“Is your mom always like this?” Shiro asked.

Keith shrugged. “Usually.”

“Okay, your mom terrifies me. Anyways, where can we put this stuff? I want to go to bed.”

Keith thought for a moment. “My dresser should be mostly empty, why don’t we just shove the stuff in a drawer and get some sleep.”

Shiro nodded. He picked up several boxes of condoms and heard a sharp intake of breath from Keith as he reached for the top drawer. He slowly lowered his hand to the second drawer and heard Keith let out the breath. Okay, top drawer is off limits, apparently.

Upon opening the second drawer, Shiro was somehow both surprised and unsurprised to find that it was almost completely full of knives. Keith peered over his shoulder, saying, “Uhh, maybe they won’t fit in this one. Try the next.”

Shiro cautiously closed the drawer, giving Keith a look. He eventually shrugged and said, “what? My family gives each other knives to show affection.”

Shiro shook his head and opened the third drawer instead. He only got the drawer half open before Keith shoved it shut. Shiro had glimpsed only a few sheets of loose leaf and Keith said to him, “If you really care about me you will never, ever look at that drawer.”

“What is it?” Shiro asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

“It’s old poetry. It’s bad. I need to burn that.”

“Why do you keep all this stuff in your dresser? Isn’t that usually for clothes?”

Keith shrugged. “Romelle looked through my desk drawers, but she never seemed to want to look at my underwear. This used to be underneath them.”

Shiro nodded and opened the fourth drawer. This one was empty aside from a picture of Pete Wentz that looked to be from the mid-2000s.  Shiro dumped the condoms on top of Pete, and helped Keith carry the rest over. He was about to close the drawer when Romelle burst in, Allura right behind her, yelling, “Keith! Where is my Lancôme eyeliner?”

“I don’t have it!” Keith yelled back, slamming the drawer shut.

“Oh, sure, you don’t. It just disappeared on its own,” Romelle rolled her eyes.

“Maybe you just lost it in your mess of a room?” Keith snapped back.

“Or maybe you’re hiding it!”

“I haven’t even worn eyeliner in years!”

“Oh yeah? What are you hiding in that drawer you just closed?”

The world seemed to move in slow motion as Romelle bounded over, threw the drawer open, then stopped. And stared.

“Holy shit, bro,” Romelle finally said. Allura was turning bright red behind her.

“Mom left them. For us,” Keith finally sighed.

“Are those bacon flavoured condoms?”

“Yeah, those sound nasty. Oh hey, try this, it tastes really good.” Keith held out the bottle of Mint Chocolate Gelato lube.

Romelle’s eyes grew wide as she sucked some off her finger, saying “oh my gooooood, Allura, try this! This is delicious! Do you think I could just, like, pour this on ice cream?”

“Maybe. Or make a milkshake or something,” Keith replied enthusiastically. “Heck, I could probably just eat that by the spoonful.”

Shiro noticed Allura looking at him, eyes wide with confusion. Shiro just shrugged back at her.

“Okay, but seriously, bro, where is your makeup?”

“I got rid of it all,” Keith said.

“No you didn’t,” Romelle argued. “I used your nail polish when I came back over Easter break and it was all sitting on top of your dresser.”

“Oh my god, Romelle, you always accuse me of taking your stuff without asking, and here you are openly admitting to taking my stuff?”

“You don’t even use it anymore! What’s the point in keeping it? Or do you think you’re going to go back to your emo Myspace days?”

“Stop making fun of me for that! I mean, when do I ever bug you about the stupid shit you did?”

Shiro looked to Allura, who looked back to Shiro. “I’ve never had a sibling before,” Allura whispered to Shiro. “Is this what it’s usually like?”

Shiro shrugged. “I’m an only child, too.”

They watched in silence for a few minutes, until their argument devolved into Romelle trying to reach into a random drawer in Keith’s dresser, and Keith trying to close said hand in the drawer. That was when Allura and Shiro finally intervened, pulling their friends apart.

“I’m going to post all your Myspace photos on Facebook, Keith!” Romelle shrieked.

“And I’m going to cut your hair in your sleep!” Keith yelled back.

Romelle then let out a loud scream, stepping back and pointing towards the wall.

“What is it?” Keith yelled, shielding Romelle with his body. His eyes followed Romelle’s finger until they landed on a rather large spider on the wall. Keith sighed, body visibly relaxing, and grabbed a Kleenex to squish the spider.

“You okay?” he asked her, dumping it in the garbage.

“My hero!” she said, pulling Keith into a hug.

Allura leaned towards Shiro, whispering, “siblings are weird.”

Shiro nodded in agreement.

-X-X-X-

Shiro lay on his side, Keith pressed up tight against his back. He could feel Keith’s breath brushing against his neck, tickling the hairs.

Or maybe that was Kosmo’s breath, as he was sprawled out over the two of them. Shiro was honestly surprised the three of them fit in the bed, and wouldn’t be surprised if one or all of them wound up on the floor by the morning.

Despite how obviously crowded it was he found it was strangely comforting. He had been sleeping alone for so long and, dating for real or not, Keith was one of his favourite people. Sure he was quick to anger and had a wild side that would probably make Shiro’s grandmother faint, but he found his presence calming nevertheless.

Kosmo rolled over, his tongue flopping onto Shiro’s shoulder. He could feel dampness soaking through into his shirt. Okay, maybe that wasn’t great, but Keith loved this dog and Shiro was starting to love him too. He wouldn’t complain.

Shiro’s eyes drifted back to the phone in his hand. Comforting presence or not, insomnia was a bitch. He closed his Duolingo app and saw the notification on his texting app that he had been ignoring. What better time to bite the bullet than now when he can’t sleep and can’t move without disturbing his friend and his friend’s best boy?

**Adam W:** Uh, hey, I know it’s been a while. But I just thought I should let you know, it looks like someone has hacked your Instagram account? I mean, they’re posting some pictures of you but they’re claiming they’re someone named Sven from Sweden. So you should probably log on and like change your password and maybe be careful where you post photos for a while, I don’t know where they pulled them from but thought you might have an idea.

Shiro stared at his phone screen and let out a silent sigh. He couldn’t deal with this right now. How was he even supposed to reply to this? Well, it’s nothing that couldn’t wait until morning, anyways.

Instead he opened up Instagram, and his mouth fell open when he saw the follower count. His follower count had already climbed up to just over 19000. How did he gain 3000 followers in a day? He tapped open his profile to see what Lance had posted recently. Staring back at him was a picture that was literally just his abs. Oh, that could explain some things.

Shiro sighed and locked his phone, gently placing it on the floor beside the bed. Enough of this. He closed his eyes, and hoped that the steady breathing and warmth on his back would help him find sleep.

When Shiro opened his eyes again, light was streaming through the window and his back felt disappointingly cold. He rolled over to look at the empty space beside him. Keith always was an infuriatingly early riser, despite giving off the vibe of someone who would sleep in past noon if given the chance.

Shiro began his morning routine, doing his wake up exercises and stretches followed by a shower. He threw on a change of clothes, grabbing his phone off the floor. He decided to leave his prosthetic arm off until he was completely dry, even if he felt a little awkward being armless in an unfamiliar place. It helped that everyone here was people he felt he could trust.

Keith’s family was already up, with Keith and Krolia working at scrubbing and cutting up potatoes, and Romelle playing with her phone at the kitchen table, nursing a coffee. Shiro assumed Allura was still sound asleep.

“Hey, Sven!” Krolia greeted.

“God morgon,” he said with a sleepy wave.

“Wanna lend a hand?” she asked, back turned to him.

“Sorry, I’m a little short right now,” he said with a laugh.

Krolia turned to him, noticing his lack of right arm. “So I guess you are.”

“That’s a pretty handy excuse,” Romelle piped up.

“Stop,” Keith said with a deadpan voice.

“Hey, it’s good to have an excuse up my sleeve,” Shiro said with a wink.

“Don’t,” Keith growled again.

“Aww Keith, are your puns leaving you stumped?” Krolia asked him with a wink.

“You guys should watch out,” Keith drawled, “…I am armed.” He held up a knife with a wicked smirk.

They all burst out laughing. Shiro’s laugh died when his phone buzzed on the table, a notification popping up on the screen. Another text from Adam.

“Is everything alright?” Keith asked, noticing the change in Shiro’s expression.

“It’s fine!” Shiro assured him, his smile not reaching his eyes. “It’s just Adam. He texted me last night.”

“Your ex?” Romelle asked.

Shiro nodded.

His phone buzzed again and Shiro swiped open the messages.

**Adam W:** By the way are you and that guy together? The one in the photos?

**Adam W:** Sorry, ignore that.

Shiro groaned.

“You okay, Sven?” Krolia asked.

“Yeah. I just… well, I guess I don’t know what to say. I don’t think I really want to talk to him,” Shiro admitted.

“Here, lemme at it. I’ll fix it,” Romelle demanded, holding her hand out to Shiro. Despite thinking this was probably a terrible idea, Shiro handed his phone over. Romelle took a moment to type, then smiled in satisfaction and handed the phone back.

Shiro looked down at the screen.

**You:** new phone who dis

Shiro let out a laugh despite himself. And laughed harder.

Keith looked at him, eyebrow raised. Shiro looked up and met his eyes.

“Yeah, she fixed it,” he said, still smiling.

Keith gave a shrug and turned back to the potatoes, smile still on his face.

“So what do you like in your potato salad, Sven?” Krolia asked.

“Um, I don’t know, I’ve never had it,” Shiro admitted.

“Yeah, the guy didn’t even know what went in it. He thought you mixed potatoes and lettuce,” Keith snorted.

“Oh my god!” Romelle exclaimed. “That sounds so nasty. Wait, did you think you put in cooked or raw potatoes?”

Shiro glared at Keith’s back. Traitor. “I don’t know,” he pouted. “I guess cooked? Who eats raw potatoes?”

“Ugh!” Romelle stuck out her tongue. “Imagine lettuce getting warm and wilting from all the warm potatoes rubbing against it, leaving a starchy residue…”

“Nope, stop, do not want,” Keith said.

“Yeah, guys, stop,” Shiro pleaded.

“Nope. No way. We are shaming you for this,” Romelle replied.

“Why even put salad in the name if it doesn’t have lettuce? Seriously?” Shiro let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been thinking about this. Like, tuna salad. What the hell.”

“Yeah, it’s almost as if having salad in its name doesn’t mean it has to contain lettuce,” Keith said.

“Fruit salad,” Shiro continued. “Egg salad. Jello salad. Taco salad.”

“Taco salad does have lettuce.”

“What?” Shiro asked.

“It has lettuce! What kind of taco salad doesn’t have lettuce, you idiot?” Keith yelled.

“Well why does that one have lettuce then?” Shiro yelled back.

“Because tacos have lettuce!”

Shiro pretended he didn’t notice Krolia whisper to Romelle, “Are you sure they didn’t already get married? They act like they’re married.”

Shiro’s phone buzzed again on the table.

“Hey, Romelle? If that’s Adam, can you delete it?” he asked, handing his phone over to her.

Romelle raised her eyebrow but did as she told. Her hands flew over the screen and she handed it back to him. “All safe!”

Shiro smiled at her in thanks, looking at the blissfully empty screen. Adam had his chance, but it was all over now. He didn’t need him, good intentions or not. All he needed, he thought, looking at the people in front of him, was right here.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> The only acceptable types of salad are taco salad and fruit salad, imo. The rest can stay far away from me.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith reluctantly admits he may have some feelings. That's really annoying honestly. But if he's got to suffer feelings at least Shiro is by his side. Now they just have to make it through meeting the rest of Keith's friends and hope that they can maintain the lie that Keith and Shiro are dating. Fake dating. They're definitely only fake dating.

“I need your help.” 

Romelle had both hands firmly wrapped around Keith’s bicep as she pulled him up the stairs. He mouthed “I’m sorry” at Shiro who was sitting at the kitchen table with Allura looking at family scrapbooks. He wanted to protest but Keith had found over the years that it was just best to go along with whatever Romelle wanted. 

After she’d closed and locked her bedroom door behind them Romelle gave him a look. 

Rolling his eyes Keith crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door. “Do you really want to leave mom unsupervised with them and scrapbooks?” 

She shrugged. “I’m not the one with a whole scrapbook dedicated to their ER visits.”  

“At least I don’t have one dedicated to the weird crap ex boyfriends tried to do to get me back.”

“Touché. Don’t let me help you then.”

Keith wilted. “Sorry.” 

“So you wanna talk about yesterday? And your existential crisis?” She flopped down on her bed and patted the mattress next to her. 

With a sigh Keith sat on the edge of the bed. “I just… I don’t know what’s happening.”

“You asked one of your best friends to be your fake boyfriend that your other best friend made up.”

If looks could kill…

“What?” Romelle rolled her eyes. “Ok, fine, I’ll be a good listener. Just like… try to get me on the same page as you.”

Flopping back on to the bed Keith grabbed the first stuffed animal he could find and held it to his chest. “It’s kind of weird. Like I love him the same as I love you and mom and even Lance. But like there’s just… there’s something else? And it’s weird. But like not a bad weird?” Keith let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s like he’s my best friend. And I just want be his best friend forever, and like protect him, and make sure he’s always happy.” 

“And you wanna bang him.”

Keith gave her his best bitch face.  

“Come on, this is truth hour.” Romelle rolled on her side and smiled at him.

Sighing Keith rolled on his side as well. “Ok maybe yah. You don’t understand how weird it was sleeping with him last night and trying not to think about it.”

“But like, weird in a good way.” She winked.

Keith threw the stuffed animal at her face. 

“Hey, be nice to Butterbutt!” Romelle grabbed the stuffed chicken, looked him over and then chucked him back at Keith’s face.

It devolved into them grabbing whatever stuffed animals they could get their hands on and chucking them at each other. 

Chest heaving and hair wild Keith held Rarity in front of his face. “I yield! Truce, whatever! You're messing up my hair!”

Rolling her eyes Romelle set down her stuffed basset hound. “Of course you're worried about your stupid hair. You gotta look good for your boyfriend.”

“Fake boyfriend!”

“Keep telling yourself that and maybe you'll wind up in one of Slav’s other realities where that’s true. Hey what colour of socks are you wearing?” She leaned over so she could get a better look at Keith’s feet.

“Do not bring professor Slav into this. That is the last thing I need to think about ever.” Keith tried his best to tuck his feet into Romelle’s blankets as he sat up. 

Romelle sat up as well and hugged a stuffed basset hound to her chest. “Ok, I’ll stop bringing up Slav if you admit that you want to date Shiro for real.”

Keith groaned. 

Tilting her head to the side Romelle looked Keith up and down. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Groaning even louder Keith got off the bed and headed towards the bedroom door. “Whatever. Just… I’m gonna go back down there and see what embarrassing stories mom has told our friends.”

“Keith.” 

He paused, hand on the doorknob and looked over his shoulder at her. 

“Just talk to him.”

“But… what if he doesn’t want to date me? I mean, I’m,” Keith shrugged, “well, me. What if I make it awkward? We aren’t going back until next week.”

Romelle got off the bed, stalked over to Keith and pulled him into a tight hug. “You are wonderful. Stubborn, yes. Kind of a dumbass sometimes too. But your heart is usually in the right place. Even if there is some small chance that he doesn’t feel the same he’s such a wonderful and kind person that he would still stick around and help you live out your lie.”

“You really think so?” 

Pulling back so that she could look him in the eyes. “Yes. And I think he really cares about you too, dummy.”

“But then why hasn’t he said anything? I mean I know I’m a really good friend but he  _ knows _ that I don’t get flirting.” Keith sighed. 

“Ok but Shiro is literally the biggest disaster gay I have ever met in my life.”

Keith snorted. “That’s a fair point. Do you remember the Denny’s incident?”

“Oh my god.” Romelle pulled back just so that she could bury her face in her hands. “I didn’t even know I could get second hand embarrassment. I mean, I grew up with you and Lance doing such embarrassing things, I thought I was immune.”

“I mean, most of that was probably our fault. We shouldn’t have egged a drunk Shiro into trying to flirt with someone so soon after the break up. That was bad 2AM drunk Denny’s advice.” Keith grimaced.

“Is it even possible to give good advice at 2AM in a Denny’s?” 

Keith shrugged. “Point. But man, I feel so bad for that server. Sometimes I wonder if he ever recovered from Shiro sobbing into his shoulder that he was sorry he flirted with him because it was inappropriate to flirt with someone while they were at work.”

“Oh, don’t forget about him going on about how nice his teeth were.” Romelle giggled.

“Ok but he did have really nice teeth.” Keith shrugged.

Romelle shook her head. “And to answer your question, no Curtis has never recovered from that.”

Keith’s eyes widened. “Wait, what? How do you know random Denny’s waiter?” 

Rolling her eyes Romelle put her hands on her hips. “I’ve told you like 500 times I have classes with him. He’s a linguistics major. Very nice. Also probably would have said yes to Shiro asking him out if he hadn’t started sobbing about 3 seconds later.”

“I’m glad he didn’t say yes.” The words were out of Keith’s mouth before he even realised what he’d said.

Romelle just quirked an eyebrow. Yah Keith wasn’t even going to try saving face with this. There was no way his sister was going to buy any of his bullshit, not after everything they’d talked about. 

“I’m going to go down there now and assess the damage to my pride. We left them alone with mom too long. Who knows what kind of embarrassing things she’s told them.” 

“I’m honestly not worried, I mean you and Lance did way more embarrassing things than I ever did.” Romelle grinned at him as she opened her bedroom door and headed down the stairs. 

“Exactly.” Keith sighed and followed her. 

As soon as Keith entered the kitchen Shiro turned to him, eyes slightly wide. “You have been to the hospital too many times.”

Heart melting just a little Keith walked over and put a reassuring hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “But none of them were like  _ really  _ serious. Besides, most of those were Lance’s fault in some way and we don’t have time to do stupid shit like that any more.” 

Everyone in the room gave him a look calling him out on his bullshit.

“Ok, as much time. Look, I only went to the ER once since I went away to college! And it wasn’t even that serious.” He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to shoot everyone his most scathing look.

“It was hilarious though.” Romelle let out a giggle.

“So why is this the first time I’m hearing about this?” 

Everyone paled as they looked over at Krolia who was eyeing them all suspiciously. They’d forgotten that they’d promised to never tell her about that night. 

Keith sighed. “Ok so we went to a party freshman year and may have gotten a little drunk. While walking the girls back to their dorm we heard some rustling in the bushes. We were all prepared to make a run for it when a cat came out. Drunk me thought it was a good idea to pick it up-”

“And shriek out ‘kitty, kitty here kitty!’ as he stumbled towards the bushes.” Romelle giggled.

“There were also kissy sounds.” Allura smiled.

Keith sighed. “Anyway, It was not a cat.” 

“It was a raccoon.” Romelle had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep in the giggles. “It looked so surprised that Keith actually caught it. Well for about 3 seconds and then it bit him. I wasn’t aware Keith could scream that loudly. Or high pitched.”

“I thought Lance was going to pee himself.” Allura chuckled.

“He did. That’s why we had to drop him off at home before I took Keith to the hospital.” Shiro, to his credit was at least trying not to laugh. He was slowly failing but the at least the sentiment was there.

“You were with them?” Krolia raised an eyebrow at Shiro.

“Oh, no ma’am. They phoned me since they needed someone who wasn’t drunk to drive them to the hospital.”

“I’m disappointed you didn't think you could share this with me.” Krolia’s stern look broke after several seconds and she grinned at them. “That’s hilarious though and I hope you learned a valuable lesson.”

“Oh definitely.” Keith nodded his head. “No petting stray animals while drunk because rabies shots hurt like a bitch.” 

“That’s my boy.” Krolia ruffled Keith’s hair as she walked by. “You kids go have fun at your barbeque. And I hope I don't have to drag myself out of bed to retrieve any drunk kids. But I will because I love you all.”

-x-x-x-

Keith didn’t have time to be nervous because Romelle didn’t even knock on Hunk’s front door, she just flung the door open and yelled “We’re here!” as she entered the house.

“Is this normal?” Allura whispered and glanced between the open door and Keith. 

Shrugging Keith followed after Romelle. “We were all really close growing up so we all kind of had standing invitations to everyone else’s houses. I think Lance spent as many nights sleeping at one of our houses as he did at his own. His family’s the greatest, Lance just liked sleepovers.” 

Moving through the familiar house with ease Keith led Allura and Shiro to the backyard. He stepped through the patio door that his sister had obviously forgotten to close and gaped at the decorations. Hung up between two trees was a brightly coloured banner with “WELCOME HOME PAL-ADINS”. There were streamers hanging from all the trees and a couple dozen balloons tied around the deck. 

“Keith!” 

He barely had time to react before Pidge launched herself into his arms. “Whoah,” he laughed as he wrapped his arms around her. “It’s good to see you too, gremlin.” 

“Hey fuck you!” Pidge gave his shoulder a halfhearted punch then went back to squeezing him as hard as she could.  

“PAL-ADIN GROUP HUG!” Lance yelled and suddenly there were multiple sets of arms being flung around Keith. 

“Oof! That’s my fucking foot!” Keith tried to pull his foot out from whatever foot was standing on it to no avail.

“Sorry!” someone muttered and moved the foot only to knee someone else. 

“I’ve missed you all so much.” Hunk said with a sniffle. 

“We missed you too big guy.” Lance was already crying and trying to wipe his tears into Keith’s shoulder.

“Oh my god get off me!” Keith meant to sound angry but he couldn’t hold back the slight laugh.  “I don’t need to get covered in tears and snot. Again.” Keith let go of Pidge who dropped back to the ground and he tried his best to disentangle himself. 

“You’re no fun.” Rolling her eyes Romelle let Keith go. 

Stumbling out of the group hug Keith went to stand next to Shiro and Allura who were both looking more than a little awkward. The rest of them continued to hug for a few more seconds before they broke apart.

Hunk glanced around and when his eyes landed on Shiro and Allura his whole face lit up. “Oh wow! You must be Sven and Allura!” he pulled the potato salad out of Shiro's hands and tucked it under his arm before thrusting his right arm at Shiro and saying “Tjenare! Hur är det?”

Keith almost threw up. But shiro, bless him, only paled slightly. He opened his mouth to say something but the words seemed to die on his tongue. He reached out slightly with his right hand then aborted the motion as well. 

“Shit” Keith muttered under his breath and moved to intervene. 

Eyes widening Hunk seemed to notice for the first time the prosthetic arm. “Hold on!” he shoved the potato salad under the other arm and offered Shiro his left. “Let’ try that again! Tjenare! I'm Hunk!” 

Shiro shook Hunks hand while forcing a bright smile. “Tjena! It is nice to meet you! I am Sven. Do you speak much Swedish?”

“Oh no no no.” Hunk continued to awkwardly shake Shiro’ hand. “I just like learned to say hello on Duolingo because I wanted you to feel welcome. You do feel welcome, right?”

“Well I might not feel anything in my hand eventually.” Shiro laughed nervously. 

“Oh my god, I'm sorry!” Hunk dropped Shiro's hand. “It’s just Keith has never introduced a boyfriend to us that we didn't already know.”

“Hunk, you’re babbling.” Pidge gently pushed Hunk out of the way and offered her hand to Shiro who shook it immediately. “I’m Pidge. Well, Katie but none of these idiots seem to remember that so Pidge is fine.”

“It’s good to meet you.” Shiro said.

Pidge then stepped over to Allura and offered her hand again. “And you must be Allura. Lance was right, you really do look like a princess.”

Lance made a strangled sound and Allura’s cheeks darkened.

“Thank you?” She’d barely let go of Pidge’s hand before Hunk grabbed her hand and started shaking it. 

“I would like hug you both but Krolia’s potato salad!” Here let me put this in the fridge and then I can greet you properly!” Hunk let go of Allura’s hand and hurried into the house. 

“Don’t mind him, he’s just excited.” Pidge grinned. “Also, I guess we should tell you now that Hunk and I invited someone that we’ve been hanging out with this last term. He should be here soon.”

“Awesome! The more the merrier.” Grinning, Lance put an arm around Keith’s shoulders. 

Rolling his eyes Keith ducked out from under the arm and went to stand beside Shiro. “Guess that’s fair. We did sort of spring two new people on our group.”

Pidge opened her mouth to say something but the doorbell rang and they could just hear Hunk yell “I’ve got it!” 

“So, are they cute?” Lance winked at Pidge. 

“Oh my god.” Romelle rolled her eyes. “Go get Allura a drink.” She pushed Lance towards the refreshment table. 

Lance made a face at Romelle but extended an arm to Allura and gave her a dazzling smile. “M’lady, may I get you a drink?”

“Of course,” Allura giggled and slipped her arm into Lance’s.

Leaning in closer to Keith and Shiro Pidge whispered. “Are they always like that?”

“Always.” Keith made a face. 

“You’re one to talk.” Romelle elbowed Keith gently.

Keith was about to give a snide retort but then Hunk came into the backyard with HELL FUCKING NO.

“NO.” Keith scowled and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Oh my god.” Pidge put a hand over her face. “It was 12 years ago!” 

“It’s good to see you too.” James attempted a smile. At least he looked as uncomfortable with everything as Keith felt. 

Sensing the growing tension Shiro lept into action and offered his hand to James. “Hi! I am Sven, Keith’s boyfriend!” 

James’ eyes widened as he took Shiro’s hand and shook it. “I’m James Griffin, a friend of Katie and Hunk.”

“And no,” Keith wrapped an arm around Shiro’s waist and pulled him away from James. “You can’t date him. I intend to keep him for as long as we both live.” He continued to glare at James. 

Someone made a strangled noise they tried to hide in a cough. Keith couldn’t check who though since he was too busy staring James down. 

Snorting James crossed his arms over his chest. “Wouldn’t be the first time you said that, Kogane.”

“I don’t…” Shiro glanced around the group looking for clarification.

“James and Keith have disturbingly similar tastes in men.” Pidge shrugged.

“It’s not that we have similar tastes that’s the problem! He stole my boyfriend! Twice!” Keith turned his scowl on Pidge.

James threw his arms up in the air. “They were both accidents! It’s not my fault that you liked to date assholes!”

“You liked to date them too!” 

The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds before they both deflated slightly. 

“We have really shitty taste in guys, don’t we?” James offered Keith a weak smile. 

“Yah, I guess.” Keith forced a smile too.

“So, truce?” James offered a hand to Keith. “And I promise I won’t steal your boyfriend. Who, honestly, does not look like our usual type. Though I can see the appeal.”

Keith took the proffered hand and shook it, albeit a little harder than he needed to. “Truce. And he’s not.” Keith looked up at Shiro and gave him a genuine smile. “He’s one of the best people I know and I feel thankful every day he’s by my side.” 

“Keith, I…” Shiro stared down at him, a blush forming on his cheeks. He didn't seem to know what to say and fuck Keith had to do something because this was getting awkward. 

Panic driving him Keith grabbed Shiro by his collar and pulled him into a kiss. Shiro seemed stunned and this only added fuel to Keith's panic. A small part of Keith’ brain was telling him that they should have discussed kissing, maybe even practiced it like the handholding. Suddenly there were hands on his waist and Shiro was kissing him back. Oh thank fuck. 

Something connected with the back of Keith’s head and Pidge yelled, “Get a room!”

Keith pulled away from Shiro and flipped her off. “Fine, we will!”

Before anyone could protest Keith had Shiro by the wrist and was dragging him into the house. 

“Please do not have sex in my house!” Hunk yelled after them.

“We'll behave! We just need a minute!” Keith yelled back as he slammed the back door. Ok yah admittedly he could have handled this all better. 

Keith pulled Shiro into the living room and then dropped his wrist. It would be easier for him to nervously pace this way. “Shit, I'm so sorry. That was inappropriate.”

“It's ok, Keith. I mean it was bound to happen eventually? We are supposed to be dating after all and well…” Shiro made a face. 

Keith didn't know what it meant. Well ok, maybe he could guess. Ok maybe he knew exactly what Shiro meant. What, he liked to make out! Was that a crime? It just felt nice and if they were busy kissing then Keith didn't have to worry about saying something stupid. 

“Ok I get your point. But still we probably should have talked about this before. Maybe had some guidelines.” Keith ran a hand through his hair. 

“Can you just-” Shiro caught him by the wrist, forcing him to stand still. “Better. And yes, I agree we should have talked about this before. Maybe even practiced?” 

Keith let out a squeak. It was embarrassing. He kind of wanted to die. 

Cheeks turning red Shiro let go of Keith’s wrist and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I mean only if you wanted to? But it would be good to practice so one of us doesn’t freeze up like I did out there.” 

“That's a good point.” Keith heard himself say it before his brain could pipe up that maybe this was not the best idea. Keith was however not one to back down from a challenge so his traitorous mouth was once again opening and worst were spilling out. “We could practice right now.”

“Oh?” it was Shiro's turn to squeak. He cleared his throat and straightened his posture. “I mean, sure, you're right. No time like the present!”

They stood in awkward silence just staring at each other for a good minute. 

How had this been so easy only a few minutes ago, and in front of all of his friends nonetheless?

Getting fed up Keith just went to grab Shiro by the collar again but Shiro backed up in surprise and nearly fell over the coffee table. 

“Shit, sorry!” Keith grabbed Shiro by the bicep to steady him. God he loved Shiro’s biceps.

“It’s ok.” Shiro placed his hand on Keith’s shoulder. “Maybe we should… sit down?” He eyed the couch nervously.

“Sure, yah, that sounds good.” 

They stood awkwardly for another few seconds until Keith realised they were going nowhere. He stumbled over to the couch and sat down, Shiro following after him mutely. 

“I’m, sorry, I’m making this weird, aren’t I?” Shiro laughed nervously as a blush started to colour his cheeks. 

“I think it’s a mutual effort.” Keith smiled.  

Sucking in a breath Keith just decided to go for it. He took it slower this time, leaning in almost painfully slow until his lips gently touched Shiro’s. It was more a peck than anything but when Keith pulled back Shiro gave him a soft encouraging smile. Giving Shiro a smile of his own Keith leaned back in for a longer kiss.

It started out slow and gentle. Like a nice sonata. They gently explored each others mouths, ensuring to keep it chaste so as to not make it too weird. But it was kind of making it weird for Keith because he didn't really do the whole gentle kissing thing.

He didn’t really mean to bite Shiro’s lip. Well, not that hard at least. But then Shiro let out that groan and well it was like something snapped and Keith realised that they were not kissing to the rhythm to a nice sonata, no this was Greig’s “In The Hall of the Mountain King” and this was the part where it suddenly sped up and got more intense. Really, he was completely helpless when Shiro pulled him into his lap and put a hand on his ass. 

Keith had a hand fisted in Shiro's hair and his tongue nearly down Shiro’s throat when he heard Lance yelp out “Gross, really?”

Keith fell off the couch in a bid to get away from Shiro. “Do you mind?” He got up off the floor, scowling at Lance the whole time. 

“Ok but do you remember what Hunk said like not even 10 minutes ago?” Lance crossed his arms over his chest and glared right back at Keith. 

“Yah. Whatever. What did you want?” Keith flopped back onto the couch and crossed his arms over his chest. 

“So, like we might have a problem.” Lance walked over to the couch and tried to squish himself in between Shiro and Keith. With a sigh Keith moved over so that Lance wasn't half in his lap. 

“What kind of problem?” Shiro glanced down at Lance's phone which was now displaying his Instagram. 

“People are starting to doubt you're from Sweden. And like a couple people recognized you? I dealt with them and they shouldn't be a problem. But like also your ex, he is a persistent guy when he wants to be.”

Shiro put his head in his hands and let out a sigh. “What is Adam doing?”

“Well he started out DMing me asking why you were going by Sven and why you were suddenly from Sweden. I thought I handled it pretty well but then he was threatening to report me for hacking your account.” 

“Can… can we see the messages?” Keith was almost afraid to look. 

“Oh, sure!” Lance hit a couple things on his phone then handed it to Keith. 

@adammittedly_punny: Takashi, what is going on?

@adammittedly_punny: I know you probably don't want to hear from me but why are you going by Sven and claiming you're from Sweden?

@disarmed_paladin: hey don't worry brah. It’ just a thing that i’m doing now. Don't worry your pretty little head.

Keith nearly dropped the phone as he let out a strangled noise. He couldn't even read the rest of the messages. Keith glanced over and saw Shiro was growing progressively paler the more he read. 

“This isn't… I can see why Adam was concerned.” Shiro was staring down at his phone, brow furrowed. He looked up at Lance, eyes pleading. “Please do not talk to my ex. I'll deal with him.”

“Sure, whatever you want. Daddy-o”

Shiro dropped his phone as he stared at Lance with wide eyes. 

“What? People are just saying you look daddy as fuck with that white streak.”

Shiro’s hand flew to his hair. “They are? But I'm not… I'm only in my 20s!”

“Technically you're like 6 and a half.” lance shrugged.

“That’s not how it works...” Shiro said weakly. “Just because my birthday is February 29th doesn't mean I stop aging the other years!”

“Ok, but-”

“Guys!” Keith yelled and pinched his nose to try to stem off the oncoming headache. 

Shiro looked like a kicked puppy and Lance just rolled his eyes.

“Can we just - Lance you said there was another problem? Something about people not believing Shiro was Swedish?”

“Oh yah!” Lance shot Keith finger guns.

They sat in silence for a few seconds until Keith sighed. “Is there anything else you have to add?”

“Nah, that’s pretty much it. I mean, if Shiro can get me some pics of him as a kid I know a guy and he can Photoshop like a pro because well I guess he is a pro.” 

“Oh, I actually have a solution to this!” Shiro retrieved his phone from the floor and started popping up windows on it. “I contacted my grandma and asked her if she had any pictures from when we visited her in Stockholm.” 

Keith and Lance shared a look.

“What do you mean visited her in Stockholm?” Keith asked.

Shiro paused his search to look over at Keith, brow furrowed. “Because she’s Swedish? She moved back to Sweden about 20 years ago after my grandfather died.”

“Wait, you’re actually Swedish?” Keith’s mouth fell open. He spared a quick glance at Lance and noticed that his mouth was also hanging open.

“Yah? Well, only ¼ Swedish. My other grandparents are all Japanese. My grandparents were both lawyers for different pharmaceutical companies and wound up working out a lot of contracts together and somehow wound up falling in love. Funnily enough,” he chuckled, “both my grandfathers were good friends too. Though my dad’s dad went on to become CEO eventually and my mom’s dad became the head lawyer.”

“Wait… are you… are you like really rich?” It was almost comical watching Lance fumble for words. Keith would really appreciate it if it were under any other circumstance. 

Shiro’s face turned red and he glanced away. “Umm. Well. I mean I have a very substantial trust fund and realistically I don’t need to work but it’s my dad who’s really wealthy.” 

“Dude!” Lance turned to Keith, eyes bright. “You landed yourself a sugar daddy!”

Keith put his face in his hands. “Oh my god.” 

“I’m not!” Shiro slapped a hand over his mouth and coughed. He continued in a much quieter voice, “I’m not Keith’s sugar daddy! We’re not even really dating.”

“Really? Because when I came in here a few minutes ago that’s not what it looked like.” Lance crossed his arms over his chest. 

“We were just practicing.” Shiro said weakly.

“Uh huh, just two bros platonically dry humping on their friend’s couch. Because two bros always kiss like that.” He alternated between looking at Shiro and Keith giving them unimpressed looks. “Definitely what me and Keith looked like that one time we kissed.”

Eyes widening almost comically Shiro glanced between the two of them. “What…”

“First year of college someone bet us $20 we couldn’t kiss for a full minute.” Keith sighed.

“Yah, and we would have been $20 richer had you not slipped me some tongue.” Lance shot Keith his best bitch face. “I’m still traumatised.” 

“Honestly, your face after I did that was worth way more than $20.” Keith laughed as he got up. “Come on, we should really get back to the party.”

“I’m gonna call Adam.” Shiro was staring down at his phone like he’d rather do anything else in the world. 

“Do you want me to stick around?” Keith moved to sit back down but Lance was already standing up and pushing him out of the room.

“Shiro’s a big boy, he can handle one ex boyfriend. It’s not like this is Scott-”

“Oh my god no, we are not bringing up that disaster.” Keith tried his best to shove a hand over Lance’s mouth as he dragged him out of the room. He mouthed a “sorry” to Shiro as he turned the corner, Lance in tow.

“Let go, if you want to fondle someone go fondle Shiro.” Lance pulled his arm out of Keith’s death hold. 

“Seriously, we’re not together!” Keith hissed.

“Ok.” Lance crossed his arms over his chest and looked Keith up and down. “You keep using these words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.” 

Keith ran his hand back through his hair. “Just… can you let it go, Lance? For now at least?”

Shifting from foot to foot Lance continued to study Keith. When Keith was just about ready to snap Lance laid a hand on Keith’s shoulder and nodded his head. “Ok, bro. But you need someone to talk to I am always here for you.”

Smiling softly Keith put a hand on Lance’s and squeezed it. “Thanks man.”

“Shall we?” Lance gestured at the backyard.

“Yah.” Smiling Keith followed after Lance. 

He’d barely made it into the backyard when James stepped in front of him. “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?”

Glancing longingly at the refreshment table Keith let out a sigh. “Sure.” He followed James to a quiet corner of the back yard and the two of them leaned against the garden shed. 

“Look, can we maybe start over? I’m sorry for what I said when I was a kid. I was dumb and jealous of you. I know that doesn’t make it any better but if there’s one thing I’ve always felt guilty about it was how shitty I was to you.”

A part of Keith wanted to be petty and tell James to fuck off. He’d certainly done that plenty of other times when he’d tried to make amends. But looking at James now, staring at the ground and absently toeing at the dirt with his shoe, it made Keith feel kind of guilty.

“Yah ok.” Keith offered him a weak smile.

“Really?” James looked up and smiled back.

“I mean, I’m sorry too. I didn’t make things easy on us either.” Saying the words made something in his chest feel lighter. Shit, maybe he should have apologised years ago. A little voice in his head (that sounded suspiciously like Romelle) chimed in with an ‘I told you so’. 

“So we’re good?” James offered a hand.

With a short nod Keith took James hand and shook it. He didn’t even try to crush all of the life out of it this time.

They stood awkwardly next to each other for a moment until James coughed. “So this is awkard.”

“I know, right?” Keith laughed. “I don’t think we’ve been in the same place without trying to throw punches at each other in over 12 years.”

“Should we maybe,” Keith gestured vaguely at the other side of the yard.

“Go back to the group before one of us says something dumb and we wind up punching each other?” James laughed. “Probably.” 

“Awesome. Good.” With a nod Keith slunk over to the refreshment table. 

Finally free Keith poured himself a generous glass of punch. Just before the liquid hit his tongue he caught a whiff of it and oh no - he swallowed it quickly and coughed.

“Did you even put any punch in this?” he wheezed out and stared over at Hunk.

“What do you mean? This is my favourite punch recipe!” Hunk poured himself a glass and took a big gulp. He spluttered and spat some of it back in his cup. “Pidge! What did you do! Why does this taste like straight vodka!” Hunk glanced around the yard frantically. “Pidge, where are you!” He headed off towards the house, still calling for Pidge. 

Sliding up next to Keith Shiro slung an arm around his shoulders. “So the punch isn't good?”

“Depends how much you like straight vodka.” Keith shrugged and took another sip of the punch. Admittedly it wasn't that bad, it had just caught him off guard.

“Noted.” Shiro took a sip of his own drink. 

“Is that…” Keith stared at the can in horror.

“Yah, sparkling water.” Shiro grinned and turned the can so Keith could see the Perier label. “Hunk got some for me and Allura because we're European.”

“No, no, no.” Ducking out from under Shiro’s arm Keith shook his head. “You can't like that. Sparkling water is angry water. I can't date someone that likes sparkling water.” 

“But it's bubbly. And fun.” Shiro pointed at the can, “And look! New strawberry flavour!” 

“I know, isn't it delightful?” Allura stood beside Shiro and smiled up at him. “Honestly it's delightful to know that somebody else enjoys sparkling water. So many people down here are so negative about it.”

“That's because it tastes like sadness and death!” Keith glanced between Allura and Shiro, betrayal on his face. “It's like I don't even know you two…” 

“It’ just water.” God was that a pout on Shiro's face? Keith couldn't handle this. 

“Hey everyone!” Keith yelled as he stood on a lawn chair so that everyone could see him. “Show of hands who thinks sparkling water tastes good?”

Shiro and Allura both raised their hands and to Keith’s horror so did Romelle and Hunk.

“I think it’s refreshing” Hunk shrugged.

“What, I like anything with bubbles.” Romelle held up her own can.

Keith mouthed “traitor” at her before he scowled around the yard. “Ok show of hands of those that think sparkling water tastes like sadness and death.”

Raising his own hand Keith noticed that Lance, Pidge and, to his utter frustration, James raised their hands. Ok maybe James wasn’t such a terrible person. At least he had taste buds. 

“I can’t believe that in this moment I trust James more than my own sister or my boyfriend!” Keith jumped down from the lawn chair, shaking his head. 

James walked over to the refreshment table, poured himself a glass of punch then raised it in the air. “Well then, a toast to our new friendship, Keith.” He raised the cup to his lips and Keith was about to say something but James was too quick and he took a long swig. Eyes widening he managed to spit some of the punch back in the cup but some of it dribbled down his chin. He looked at the cup in utter betrayal. 

“Oh my god, I can’t take this.” Hunk hurried towards the punch bowl and went to take it away. 

“No, it’s fine!” James hastily set down his cup and put both hands on the edge of the punch bowl to hold it down. It’s good! Just surprisingly strong. Like maybe you could add a little more juice if you really wanted?” He smiled at Hunk. There was still punch dripping off his chin.

“Hmm, you could be right.” Hunk’s face broke out into a wide smile. “Let me see what I have. I can fix this!”

As Hunk hurried into the house James deflated slightly and wiped at his chin.

“Here,” Keith handed him a napkin. “You did good.”

James wiped his face. “Yah, well I’ve had a lot of experience diffusing late night crises this last term.

“Ahh, 3AM baking sessions.” Keith nodded. “Did you know I once was woken up because him and Lance were on skype both baking the same recipe of cookies at 3AM? The day before finals. I nearly lost it.” 

“I know, right! I was like ‘dude, you need to sleep, stress baking isn’t going to make it better’.”

“That’s exactly what I told Lance!” 

They stared at each other for a few awkward seconds before they started laughing. Maybe they could do this friend thing after all?

-x-x-x-

“Bon appetit!” Hunk placed the final plate on the table and smiled at everyone. 

“This looks absolutely lovely.” Allura daintily placed the top of her bun on her hamburger. “You said you made everyone’s burger specifically to their preferences?”

“Yah, I just, I wanted everyone to be really happy. So I made sure to make everyone’s favourites.”

Everyone chimed in their own words of gratitude. 

“Why are Lance’s and Keith’s so… red.” James eyed their respective plates warily. 

“Ahh, good question. It’s because there is so much sriracha sauce in there I had to wear gloves to make them. Honestly guys. I think mere mortals would die if they ate them.” His eyes widened slightly. “Please don’t die. Wait, maybe I should make you new-”

“Nah man, they look great.” Lance picked up his burger and took a large bite. His eyes went wide. He started to furiously chew as Hunk seemed to grow paler and paler. Finally with a final swallow he turned to Hunk and forced a grin. “That is so spicy. Wow. Please… please someone give me a drink. Any drink.” He grabbed the nearest drink which happened to be Allura’s sparkling water and took a long swig. “Wow, that is still not refreshing.” Lance made a face at the can. 

Keith looked at his own burger with trepidation. “Are there pickles? I feel like I need more pickles.” Hunk had put one layer of pickles on his burger but this was insufficient. After all, hamburgers and sandwiches were just pickle delivery systems. 

Pidge passed a plate of pickles over to him and Keith went about arranging more pickles than were possibly socially acceptable on his burger. When he felt it was enough he secured the top of the bun to the burger and took his own bite. 

If Keith were ever to describe what summer in the desert tasted like then this would be it. The only thing probably saving him right now was the ungodly amount of pickles. 

By the time he finished chewing his nose was starting to run but honestly it was pretty good. He gave hunk a thumbs up. “It’s great, Hunk. Thank you.” 

The smile Hunk shot him was blinding. 

Now that the spectacle was over everyone started to eat their own burgers. Keith grabbed the ketchup and doused his burger in ketchup, praying internally that the sweetness would help alleviate some of the pain. 

Shiro leaned over, lips almost brushing against Keith’s ear, and whispered, “are you going to be ok? That burger’s giving me heartburn just looking at it.”

Keith turned his head so that he could whisper back into Shiro’s ear. “Yah. It’s really good, just like… so hot. I may actually die from this. If not eating it then it coming out the other end…”

Shiro just patted him on the shoulder and gave him a sympathetic look. 

Any further conversation was interrupted by everyone starting to pass around various bowls and trays of food.

“Is this Salad?” Shiro held up the bowl of coleslaw and stared at it, brow furrowed.

“OH MY GOD STAY EXACTLY LIKE THAT” Lance shrieked as he pulled out his phone and snapped a picture. 

“Do I…” Shiro looked to Keith for help. Keith just put a hand over his face. 

“That’s coleslaw, dear.” Allura said. 

“Ok but, why does  _ this _ one have a special name? Why isn’t it just…” Shiro frowned at the contents of the bowl. “Slimy salad?”

“The Dutch term koolsla literally translates to cabbage salad.” Allura shrugged. 

“Of course the Dutch came up with this…” Shiro glared at the coleslaw.

Allura spat out her drink as she started laughing. 

Keith glanced at Lance and mouthed “what?”. Lance just shrugged. 

Giving the contents of the bowl one final look of disgust Shiro passed it on down the table. The table quickly fell into the silence that can only be obtained when the table is covered in delicious food. Everyone was too busy stuffing their faces to talk.

It took until Pidge finished wolfing down her burger for her to break the silence. “So Sven,” She wiped some ketchup off her face. “Can I ask about your arm?”

The table fell dead silent. Shiro was completely frozen, potato wedge almost in his mouth. 

“Umm what I mean is your robotic arm, that’s some pretty advanced technology? It’s a prototype, right? Can I ask who made it?” 

“Oh, umm, yah.” Shiro put his potato wedge back down. “It’s an Altea Tech prototype.”

“Get out!” Pidge nearly toppled her lawn chair over in her haste to get up. She scurried over to Shiro’s side and started looking at his arm so closely her nose was almost touching it. “How did you manage that?”

“Well, I just happened to be the right body type for this particular model they wanted to test. It’s pretty heavy and bulky.” 

“Plus it helped that you knew someone on the inside.” Allura smiled fondly.

Pidge’s head snapped up and she alternated looking between Allura and Shiro, mouth hanging open. “Wow, how did you manage that?”

“Well, my father is Alfor-”

“WHAT?” Pidge stood up straight, eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. “Please… please marry me.”

Allura’s mouth fell open and she started to blush. “I…”

“No way!” Lance stood up so quick his lawn chair tumbled to the ground. “You’ve known her what, three whole hours! She’s not marrying you, Pidge.”

“Lance, I-”

“Then go out on a date with me?” Pidge shot Allura a pleading look.

“I’m flattered, really I am Katie, but I think I will have to decline. However, if you’re ever in the area I would be thrilled to give you a tour?” 

“Really? Wow, that would be so cool!” Pidge beamed.

“Hey Pidge.” Keith leaned forward so he could see around Shiro. “Go sit down so my boyfriend can finish his food. You can ask him 20 questions when we’re done eating.” 

Glancing around Pidge noticed that everyone was watching her. “Oh wow, this is really embarrassing.” She slunk back to her chair and went back to shovelling food into her mouth.

“I’m going to get some more punch.” Keith stood up from the table and grabbed his cup. “Anyone else need drinks?”

“You better grab something for everyone because we are getting wasted tonight!” Lance held up his empty cup. 

Yah, this was gonna be a long night. But there was nowhere Keith would rather be at this very moment in time. 

-x-x-x-

When it came time to leave drunk Keith had looked out into the warm night and informed everyone that he wanted to walk home. It was only about 10 blocks and honestly he missed walking around here at night. Lance had called him a weirdo then promptly stumbled into the backseat of Romelle’s car loudly proclaiming that he was glad she could give him a ride now since there was room. To Keith’s delight Shiro had opted to walk with him. 

They’re about half way home when Keith’s drunk brain decided that it didn’t want to walk in silence any more. He bumped shoulders with Shiro and said, “Hey Shiro.” 

“Mmm?” Shiro glanced down at him and smiled fondly.

“You ever been in love?” A small part of his sober brain, one that sounded suspiciously like his sister, screamed at him ‘what the actual fuck, Keith?????? That’s what you decided out of any possible question to ask him???????’

Shiro’s step faltered but he quickly caught up with Keith. “Yah.”

“How many times?” Deep down a voice in Keith’s head was telling him to stop. He didn’t need to know the answer to this. Well, he did if the answer was the right answer, but what was the chances of that happening? He was way too drunk to be able to recall any of the probability he’d learned in math class. 

“Twice.” The way Shiro said it seemed almost sad. 

“So you were in love with Adam?”

This time Shiro did stop. The sad look on his face sent a dagger through Keith’s heart. God what kind of a dick was he bringing up Adam at a time like this? 

“Yah, I… I thought I was going to marry him.” Shiro stared down at the pavement.

“Hey,” Keith stepped right in front of Shiro and gave him a lopsided smile. “I’m kind of glad you didn’t. Like getting dumped sucks but also we became friends because you have shitty taste in music.”

Shiro snorted and gave Keith a weak smile. “I guess. And I am pretty glad we’re friends, Keith.”

“So,” Keith tilted his head. “Who’s the other lucky guy?”

“I uhhh…” Shiro made a face. 

“It’s complicated?” 

With a sad laugh Shiro nodded his head. “You could say that. I think it might be unrequited.”

“That sucks.” Keith jammed his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, spun around and started back on their walk. “If I could fall in love, I’d want it to be with a guy like you, Takashi.” 

Keith got three houses away before he noticed that Shiro wasn’t following. He glanced over his shoulder to find Shiro staring at the ground, unreadable expression on his face. 

“Shiro?” Keith called but there was no response. He quickly stumbled back to where Shiro seemed to be stuck. “Hey buddy, you ok?” 

Shiro seemed to startle and he stared at Keith, turmoil evident on his face. 

Drunk Keith was starting to realise that he might have said something he shouldn’t have. Shit fuck he needed to say something because that sad look in Shiro’s eyes was killing him.

“I mean,” Keith blurted out. “Like falling in love seems terrifying. I’m so glad that I can’t fall in love. What’s worse than knowing that one day you might wake up and like not be in love with someone any more? No thank you. I like being aromanatic no arotram - shit whatever the fuck - aro. I’m so glad I’m aro because the thought of not loving you is scary as fuck.” Keith’s hand flew up to his mouth because shit he did not mean to say that. 

Shiro gasped. “You…” 

“We’re both like drunk we should go-” Keith started to turn and continue on their way but was stopped by Shiro grabbing his arm.

“It’s you. I’m in love with you.” Shiro looked almost pained when he said it. 

“Oh.” It’s not what Keith wanted to say but his brain had suddenly gone blank and he couldn’t think of what words are. What does he say? Actually, how does he breathe? 

“Keith, I’m-”

“Oh! I’m really glad.” Keith wrapped his arms around Shiro’s chest and hugged him as tight as he could. It took about three seconds before Shiro’s arms wrapped around Keith and squeezed him just as tight. 

They stood for a couple minutes just hugging on the street in front of some random person's house. Eventually Keith began to tremble with barely contained giggles.

“What?” Shiro whispered into Keith's hair. 

“We've done this all ass backwards. We started fake dating because Lance is an idiot, you met my mom, then we confessed our love or whatever, and we're  _ still _ not dating for real.”

Suddenly shiro pulled back so he could look Keith in the eyes. “Do you want us to to be dating?”

“Yah.” Keith smiled. 

Shiro’s face absolutely lit up. He started leaning in for a kiss but Keith grunted out a “wait” and put up a hand to block it. The only problem was he was still drunk enough that hand-eye coordination was not really there and a finger somehow went up shiro’s nose. Shiro stumbled back in surprise and slapped a hand over his nose. Keith looked at his finger in horror and inspected it for boogers. It looked pretty clean. Well, for a finger that had just gone up someone’s nose.

“So sorry!” Keith went to move forward but Shiro stumbled back another step, eyes wide. “Are you ok?”

Nodding slightly Shiro pulled his hands away from his face and inspected them. No blood. That was good. 

With a sigh Keith relaxed. “I’m glad.” He stepped closer and this time Shiro didn’t back away. “What I wanted to say is we shouldn’t tell anyone.”

“What? But we-”

“No just like think for a second.” They stared at each other for an awkward minute. It was obvious that Shiro’s drunk brain was not on the same page as Keith’s drunk brain. Finally Keith sighed. “If we tell the others that we’re real dating they’ll just make fun of us.” Now that he’s said it aloud drunk Keith is starting to think that his drunk brain might be a little bit stupid and in fact this may be a ridiculous idea. 

“Oh, I guess that makes sense.” Shiro nodded sagely.

Well then, if Shiro agreed then maybe it’s not such a bad idea? 

Keith yawned. He covered his mouth in surprise then let out a giggle. 

“Maybe we should go home?” Shiro held out a hand and Keith took it gladly and they started walking down the street again. This was nice, he could get used to this. They made it to the end of the block before Shiro stopped and turned to Keith. “Uhh, you have to lead. I don’t know where we’re going.”

“Neither do I, I’m just glad we’re going there together.” Honestly, Keith was pretty proud of how romantic and sweet that sounded. 

Eyes widening Shiro looked around. “But… I thought you said you knew how to walk home from Hunk’s. Do we need to call someone to come get us?” Shiro started patting at his pockets looking for his phone. 

“Oh!” Keith let out a laugh and was glad that the darkness hid the blush on his cheeks. He tugged on Shiro’s hand and started to lead them across the street. “No, I know how to get home. I could probably walk home blindfolded. I was just trying to be, you know, flirty or whatever.”

Shiro squeezed his hand. “Oh, you did very well then. I’m just sort of… overwhelmed? And happy. Really happy.”

“Me too, you make me really happy, Shiro.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh drunk Keef, what have you done? 
> 
> maliciouslycreative here, and I hope you all are having a great holidays! My writing of this sort of got derailed by whatever the heck season 8 was. At last one good thing to come out of that was my newfound love for James. I'd sort of planned to include him before s8 but then it came out and it just strengthened my love. 
> 
> We'd love to hear what made you laugh the hardest. :3


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro and Krolia get some time to bond, and the gang all have a board game night. What can go wrong?
> 
> Shiro finds out that a lot of things can go wrong. Sometimes all at the same time.

“You sure you’ll be okay while we’re gone?” Keith asked, looking at Shiro with deep concern in his eyes.

“Yes, Keith, I will survive a few hours without you,” Shiro replied, holding back a laugh. “Besides, you guys planned this and booked it, like, forever ago. I’ll be fine. Just promise me you’ll make it out.”

“Don’t worry, I am like, an escape room master. As long as Lance doesn’t forget that he found the freaking key without telling anyone, _again_.”

Shiro did laugh this time. “Don’t tell anyone, but I hope your team wins.”

Keith beamed up to him. “Don’t worry, we totally will. Besides, we have to. I can’t leave you a widow, now can I?”

Their conversation paused as Allura and Romelle brushed past in a flurry of shoes, sweaters and conversation. “I’m driving, Keith! Allura is shotgun! See you out there!” Romelle shouted, swinging the keys around her finger. They heard the girls giggling as they went further down the driveway towards to car.

“I guess that’s our cue,” Shiro said, listening to the car door slam twice.

“Guess so. Don’t want them to leave me behind.”

Shiro leaned down without thinking, pressing a kiss to Keith’s cheek. They both looked at each other in surprise, before bursting out giggling.

Giggles. Shiro never thought Keith was capable of giggles.

With a small wave Keith left the house, the door closing gently behind him. Shiro let out a small, dreamy sigh, touching his lips with the tips of his fingers. He turned around, ready to go up to Keith’s room to get some reading done, and nearly tripped over his own feet when he saw Krolia leaning against a wall, staring at him.

“Krolia, ma’am!” Shiro stuttered, face turning bright red. How long had she been standing there?

“Aww, how sweet,” she finally smirked at him.

Shiro didn’t think his face could go even redder, but life was full of surprises.

“I am sweet. Just like a Swedish fish.”

God, did that really just come out of his mouth?

Krolia, to his relief, burst out laughing, pulling him into a one armed hug. “Sven, I don’t know where Keith found you, but I’m glad he did. You’re weird in a good kind of way.”

Shiro had no idea how he was supposed to take that, so he said nothing.

“Anyways, I need to make some cookies for a bake sale but I am shit at anything to do with the kitchen. Mind lending a hand while the kids are out?”

“What do you mean?” Shiro asked. “You’re a great cook, dinner has been delicious.”

“Yeah, because it’s all potatoes. I’m great at potatoes. Give me a steak, and it will be black on the outside and still mooing on the inside. That’s why my kids help with the other things. At some point I guess they got sick of all potatoes.”

“Fair enough,” Shiro shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint, but I am not good at cooking, either. I made Keith Kraft Dinner a few weeks ago and I think he almost cried.”

“Well, maybe with the two of us we can make it work? Like, how hard can cookies be, honestly?” Krolia asked. “Seriously, I need help. I can’t do this alone, Sven. You’re my only hope.”

“Alright,” Shiro gave her a tense smile, “let’s do this! Cookie time!”

-X-X-X-

“First, we cream butter and sugar,” Shiro read from the recipe. “It says ½ cup of butter.”

“How much is one of these?” Krolia asked, holding up a margarine square. “I can use margarine, right? I’ve never bought butter in my life.”

“I think it’s fine. Umm, I don’t know how much it is. A cup is pretty big, right? Maybe it is a quarter of a cup?”

Krolia looked at it in consideration. “That sounds right.” She grabbed two of them from the box. “How much sugar?”

“One cup,” Shiro read.

Krolia grabbed a mug from the cupboard, paused, and pulled another one down. “How do I know how big of a cup?” She held out the two mugs, one significantly larger than the other.

“I think you’re supposed to use a measuring cup.”

“I don’t own a measuring cup.”

Shiro considered a moment. “I think that one looks more standard,” he said, pointing at the one in her left hand.

Krolia nodded sagely and measured sugar to the brim before dumping it into the bowl with the margarine.

“Now what was that, something about cream?”

“Yeah, ‘cream butter and sugar together’,” Shiro read out loud.

Krolia wrinkled her eyebrows before reaching into the fridge and pulling out some coffee cream. “How much do you think?” She asked.

“I don’t know, it doesn’t say. Maybe just a little?”

Krolia shrugged her shoulders and poured in a glob of coffee cream.

“Do we mix it now?” She asked.

“It doesn’t say,” Shiro frowned, skimming the page. “Oh, next it says to add the egg and mix well. So I guess put in the egg first.”

“Ugh, I hate cracking eggs,” Krolia grimaced. “Usually I get shell in.”

“Oh, I’m pretty good at it!” Shiro piped up. “My new arm here is pretty good at fine motor movements, it almost feels like a real arm sometimes! I used to crack eggs as practice movements.”

He felt Krolia watch him as he reached into the carton, pulled out and egg, and raised his hand slightly above the rim of the bowl.

He then watched in horror as his robotic hand suddenly jerked, closing around the egg and squeezing it with all the force his hand could muster.

Egg white and yolk shot up out of his hand like a fountain, arching in laser guided precision directly into Shiro’s face.

“That was unfortunate,” Shiro said, egg dripping off his face onto the table.

“Maybe I’ll do the egg,” Krolia whispered, eyes wide. Shiro nodded and went to the bathroom to go clean his face.

When Shiro returned, Krolia had added the eggs and was stabbing at the bowl with a spoon. “How the heck are we supposed to mix this?” She asked him, giving it a very firm thrust. “The margarine is rock solid. Here, you give it a try.”

Shiro grabbed the bowl and spoon and began swirling the contents in a circle. Sure enough, the egg was mixing with the sugar but the margarine refused to break down. He stabbed with the spoon for a few minutes but ultimately gave up. “What did we do wrong?

Krolia was staring at the bowl, brows scrunched up in thought. Finally she turned around and opened up a drawer, producing a potato masher. “Step aside, I think I got this.”

After far too much time had passed and too much batter had wound up on the table, Krolia had managed to pulverise the mixture into something that was mostly smooth. “Wow, I never knew baking was such a workout,” she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes with her wrist. “What’s next?”

“A teaspoon of vanilla.”

Krolia grabbed a random spoon out of the drawer and threw the vanilla in. “I don’t own a measuring spoon,” she said as if to explain. Shiro honestly didn’t expect anything different.

Shiro looked down at the paper again. “Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt.” Shiro looked up at her. “Wait, sift? With, like, a sieve?”

Krolia gave him a confused look before digging in a drawer again and pulling out a coffee strainer. “This seems wrong.”

“Well do you have a better idea?”

Krolia thought a moment before realising, no, she didn’t. What happened next was something they would never discuss again. The sieve could only hold so much of the dry ingredients, and trying to shake it all through the small holes was a test of both patience and sanity. More of it wound up on the floor or the table rather than in the bowl and at some point Krolia just screamed “fuck this!” and dumped the rest of it, unsifted, into the wet ingredients. Shiro gently took the spoon and began stirring.

Finally it was time for the chocolate chips. At this point neither of them wanted anything to do with the recipe and Krolia simply dug her hand into the chocolate chip bag, pulling out handfuls to chuck into the bowl.

The dough… didn’t look right. It was oily and thin, and resembled more of an uncooked butter tart filling than cookie dough. There was obviously too many chocolate chips and if the dough had been any more firm it probably would have all fallen apart. As it stood, they were going to just roll with it and see what would happen.

Krolia stretched a sheet of wax paper over a jelly roll pan because no, Sven, I do not have parchment paper and wax paper should work just fine, right?

Shiro had a feeling that was not right, but at this point he was quite scared of Krolia in her bad mood and didn’t say anything.

Krolia dropped the unappetising spoonfuls onto the pan with an even more unappetising splat and shoved the pan into the preheated oven. She set the timer for 10 minutes and flopped down onto a chair.

“Ugh, I need a drink,” she growled. “You know, I used to just buy brownies to give away in the bake sale. They always sold! Who doesn’t like two-bite brownies? But no, Mrs. Sanda that _bitch_ says that ‘it’s not fair to sell something that they could just buy at store’ and ‘the most beautiful things come from our own hands’ and ‘Jesus would be so proud of our efforts’ like bitch! Jesus didn’t die so I could kill someone with my god-awful baking. He died so I could buy some goddamn two-bite brownies and not have to suffer through all this shit.”

Shiro slowly began to tune Krolia out. It was times like these that it was very obvious that Krolia was Keith’s mother, as he has had much practice tuning out Keith’s rants as well. It was when she was well into some rant that had something to do with socialism and bake sales that Shiro noticed something.

“Do you smell that?” He asked.

Krolia stopped mid sentence. She turned her head towards the oven and whispered “oh no.”

They both jumped into action, Krolia throwing the door open and waving her hands in front of her face. Shiro grabbed two oven mitts and grabbed the pan, yanking it out of the oven and dumping it straight into the sink. Krolia ran around throwing open windows and doors to help air out the house as the smoke detector beeped shrilly from the hallway. Shiro beat at the pan until the small fire that had started in the wax paper had been extinguished.

Finally, when all had calmed down, they stared at what remained. The cookies were not fully baked, and would probably never be fully baked. The tops slid down the pan while the bottoms remained fused to the wax paper. Whatever they did, it was not right.

When Keith and the girls returned home, they found both Shiro and Krolia sitting at the kitchen table, chugging wine out of solo cups.

“What is that smell?” Allura asked, pinching her nose.

“Did you two try baking?” Keith asked, staring in horror at the mess on the table. “Why would either of you do that? Like, alone is bad enough, but together?”

“I thought we could do it,” Krolia groaned, rolling her head into her arms that were crossed over the table. “It’s for the bake sale.”

Keith picked up the spoon and poked at the mixture that was still in the bowl. “Is this cookie dough? Like, maybe we can fix this. Here, this is the recipe?”

Keith tasted the dough and nodded. “Yeah, we can fix this. Hold on.”

Shiro watched as Keith danced around the kitchen, grabbing the ingredients that they had put away. He added more flour, mixing until it was somewhat solid, tasted it, and added more sugar. With a few suggestions from both Romelle and Allura, they had somehow managed to whip up something that looked like cookie dough out of their abomination. Romelle rolled a small ball and popped it into her mouth, and smiled.

“We’ve done it!” she said with a smile. “Get that oven back on, clean off whatever is on the pan, these are getting baked!”

Shiro watched as Keith pulled out a can of Pam and sprayed the baking sheet and definitely did _not_ use wax paper.

Fifteen minutes later the pan came out of the oven and Shiro thought he could cry.

When he tried one of the cookies, he might have actually cried. In his defence, he had had a lot of wine and he was a pretty disastrous drunk.

“I love you,” he whispered to Keith as he held the half-eaten cookie in his hand.

“Love you too you hot mess,” Keith smiled back.

-X-X-X-

The next day was game night at the Holt household. Shiro was staring at the document that Keith had texted him on his phone. He looked between his phone and the open cupboard, frowning. In his hand was a list of every person who was banned from every game they had played together. In the cupboard was more games than he even knew existed.

Of course, his board game knowledge was mostly limited to Monopoly and Snakes and Ladders.

“Ugh, how many games do we even own? Let’s just go game by game,” Keith suggested. Shiro nodded, reading out whether or not the game was banned by anyone attending as Keith held up each game.

Battleship

Lance- 2010 (cheating)

Twister

Keith- 2010 (hospital)

Lance- 2010 (hospital)

Uno

Keith- 2011 +2013 (fistfight)

Lance- 2011 (fistfight)

Romelle- 2013 (fistfight)

Operation

Keith- 2011 (fistfight)

Lance- 2011 (fistfight)

Taboo

Hunk- 2012 (just REALLY bad)

Risk

**EVERYONE -** 2014 (WHY DO WE OWN THIS FUCKING GAME???)

Apples to Apples

Matt- 2015 (INDECISIVE)

Hunk- 2015 (INDECISIVE)

Monopoly

PIDGE- 2016 (banking incident)

Scrabble

Romelle- 2016 (cheating)

\--I DON’T CHEAT YOU’RE JUST ALL BAD - ROMELLE

Battlestar Galactica

Lance- 2016 (too indecisive)

Hunk- 2016 (too indecisive)

Keith- 2016 (too impatient)

Pidge- 2016 (too impatient)

Kittens in a Blender

Hunk- 2017 (crying)

Barbie: Queen of the Prom

Keith - 2017 (fighting over prom date)

Lance - 2017 (fighting over prom date)

Hungry Hungry Hippos

Keith- 2018 (hospital)

Lance- 2018 (hospital)

Shiro looked up at Keith. “Honestly, I thought a board game night sounded fun, but now I’m just scared.”

Keith snorted and pulled out another game. “Hey, is anyone banned from Pictionary?”

Shiro skimmed the list. “No.”

Keith placed the game alongside Cards Against Humanity (which they had never played as a group before) and a copy of Truth or Dare Jenga that Keith had sworn he’d never seen before. They went through the rest of the cupboard and list and determined that those were the only games that no one attending was banned from, so they packed them up and joined Romelle and Allura in the kitchen.

“Ready to go?” Keith asked.

“Yup!” Romelle replied, hoisting up her bag of alcohol. “You found some games?”

“Yeah, a few. We’ll make it work,” Keith nodded.

“Cool. As long as there’s no hospital visits this time. Well, let’s go!”

Allura gave Shiro a look. He shrugged in response.

They walked the few blocks over to Pidge’s house. As they entered and greeted the guests already in attendance, Shiro looked over at the object of his despair.

Namely, Matt Holt.

Sure, Matt was a great guy. Even though contact had slowed a bit since Shiro had moved away, they still kept in touch and Shiro considered him a pretty good friend. The fact that he had to act like he didn’t know him and make a complete fool of himself in front of him despite the fact that they hadn’t seen each other face to face for quite some time was making him feel, well, anxious, to say the least.

Matt finally looked up from the table that he was setting up and locked eyes with Shiro. He walked over and gave him a strained smile.

“Hello, you must be Sven, right?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“Hallo,” Shiro greeted with an equally strained smile, “it is nice to be meeting you! Yes I am Sven, and I am dating Keith. I am happy to meet you, who I am guessing is the brother of Pidge.”

“That is a good guess, I am he! Pidge’s brother. Matt. Yeah. Nice to meet you.” Matt’s eyes screamed ‘help’ while his smile screamed ‘kill me’.

“Yikes, Matt, are you okay?” Pidge asked, looking at her brother with concern. “You look like you’re gonna pass out.”

“I’m fine! He’s fine. We’re fine,” Matt laughed nervously.

Pidge did not look convinced.

“No, really,” Matt tried to reassure her, “It’s just… he’s… you know…”

Pidge raised her eyebrow.

“Really attractive?” Matt finally squeaked out. “Yeah, super hot. I was just surprised. Keith’s boyfriend is banging. Caught me off guard. I’m gonna go get a drink.”

The rest of the room stared as Matt left, face white as a ghost.

“Oh my, uh, guys? Does Matt have a crush on Keith’s boyfriend?” Hunk asked.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe I didn’t notice. I thought he was straight,” Pidge breathed out. “I can’t believe I just heard my brother say that someone was ‘banging’ with my own two ears.”

Shiro felt his face turn red. “Um, I don’t think he has a crush on me. Like, maybe it is all platonic. Yes, I think it is.”

“Uh, sorry to point this out, but like. He said you were hot. And was staring at you like he was terrified. I think he has a crush on you,” Hunk unhelpfully supplied.

“It’s just one meeting!” Shiro tried to argue. He flopped down on the couch, shoving his hands over his face. Why did Matt have to use that as an excuse for his nervousness? Sure Shiro wasn’t entirely comfortable in this situation either, but at least he didn’t accidentally convince his friend group that he had a crush on anyone. Other than Keith, that is.

James was the final guest to arrive and Shiro noticed that Keith and him exchanged surprisingly warm greetings. It seemed like any bad blood between them had faded.

“So, what’s up? Hey, isn’t Matt supposed to be here? Where is he?” James asked, tossing the bags of chips he brought on the table.

“Oh he’s here. He’s just probably taking a cold shower after his frankly embarrassing first meeting with Sven,” Pidge rolled her eyes.

“Do I want to know?” James asked.

“Sven entered and Matt like, as soon as he saw him, he looked up at him like he’d seen a ghost. So he walks over, and greets him in like the most awkward way imaginable. And then he keeps smiling at him! But like a super creepy smile. And when I ask if he’s okay he honest to god told me that he thought Shiro was ‘banging’. His words, not mine,” Pidge explained.

“Oh my god. He came onto Keith’s boyfriend? Did he know they’re dating?” James asked, holding back a laugh. “And here Keith thought I was going to be the one trying to steal him.”

“Guys, it’s not a big deal,” Shiro tried once again to argue.

“Yeah guys, Sven’s just… a lot to take in at first, you know?” Keith agreed. “He’ll get over it. Yeah, definitely.”

“Oh no way, he was totally swooning over him,” Lance argued back. “Lovey dovey eyes.”

“Lance!” Keith yelled in his ‘I seriously might knife you if you don’t stop’ voice.

“What? I am just simply stating the truth,” he said with a smug smirk.

Shiro had a sinking suspicion that Keith had shared Shiro and Matt’s previous relationship with the others. Just like Lance to try to stir the pot.

“Well, as he knows that Sven is in a relationship, surely he will keep his thoughts to himself. Romelle, why don’t you go find him?” Allura asked, a strained smile on her face.

Yup, they definitely knew about their history together.

When Romelle had finally managed to drag Matt back into the room he looked significantly more drunk than earlier. He walked up to Shiro, stated “I am so sorry for hitting on you in front of your boyfriend,” then promptly sat down as far away from Shiro as he could.

“Well, friends, let’s get started!” Hunk clapped his hands together, standing up. “Let’s see… oh, Keith brought Pictionary! That sounds like a good game to warm up with.”

Everyone could tell that Hunk was trying to get rid of the awkward atmosphere and rushed to help him set up. Everyone except for Lance, that is, who was too busy nudging Shiro in the side and raising his eyebrows.

After a marathon round of Rock Paper Scissors it was determined that Pidge would go first, leading her team that she had dubbed ‘Team Girls Plus Sven’ to guess the first round.

“Why is Sven on the girls’ team?” Lance asked.

“Because we have nine people so we needed to steal a guy to make it even and Sven seems cool,” Pidge answered.

“But it’s still not even,” Lance pointed out.

“Yeah, but mentally we still destroy you. Now shut up, I’m starting.”

Pidge drew a card from the pile and narrowed her eyes. “What the hell kind of a Pictionary game is this?”

“Language, Katie,” Matt muttered.

“No, seriously. What is this?” She turned the card around to everyone so they could see. It simply read ‘fragment’.

“How does one draw a fragment?” Allura asked, squinting at the card.

“Maybe you can draw, like, a sandwich. But with a bit of sandwich ripped off. Then point at the ripped off bit? Man, I’m hungry, pass me the chips,” Hunk tried.

“Who says ‘the fragment of a sandwich’?” Keith replied. “You’d need to do a broken vase or something.”

“No, I know!” Matt piped in. “Fragment was the name of the Beta version of The World in the .Hack franchise-”

“No one cares about your nerd shit, Matt.”

“Katie!”

The group discussion devolved into a rather heated argument until Lance finally yelled “Just pick a new card! No one cares about the etymology of the word ‘fragment’! I don’t even know what etymology means!”

The group murmured their agreement and Pidge picked up a new card. She looked at it with disdain until she finally put her pencil to the page.

 

There was a bit of uneasy silence until Shiro finally opened his mouth. “Umm, religion? Secret order?”

“Illuminati!” Romelle piped up.

“Christianity. Catholicism?” Allura tried.

Pidge made a gesture at Allura, as if telling her to continue.

Unfortunately, the three of them seemed to have blanked.

Pidge gave a sigh of frustration and continued her drawing.

“Oh! Potato! Baby? Potato baby?” Romelle asked.

“Spanish inquisition!” Allura snapped her fingers.

Romelle and Shiro both looked at her.

“What? Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition.”

“Why is it crossed out?” Shiro asked. “Holy king? Bastard child?”

“Potato bastard?” Romelle asked.

“No potato baby!” Pidge yelled.

“Hey you can’t speak!” Lance called.

Pidge simply glared at him.

“Is it the dude that painted the Sistine Chapel? That was…” Shiro blanked.

“Leonardo da Vinci?” Allura asked tentatively.

“I think that’s right!” Romelle agreed. Shiro nodded.

Pidge looked like she wanted to scream.

“Okay, but maybe, did the king find his advisor drawing nudes of his wife?” Romelle guessed.

“Where did you get that from?” Pidge yelled.

“Okay, guys, time,” Matt interrupted, pointing at the timer.

“Oh my god, you guys are so hopeless,” Pidge groaned. “Maybe I should have taken Keith or something on my team instead.”

“Oh come on, Keith’s going to have no idea what that is,” Lance laughed.

“Protestantism,” Keith stated.

“Yes! Yes you dumbnuts!” Pidge yelled.

“What?” Lance shrieked.

“It’s obvious. That’s Martin Luther nailing his list to the church door. Then that over there is King Henry VIII, who wanted to divorce his wife for not giving him a male heir,” Keith explained.

“I love you, Keith,” Pidge whispered, crawling over the table to hug him.

“Hey, you know he just got the other team a point, right?” Romelle asked.

“Yeah, but someone here understands me. Just let me have this moment, okay?”

“Wait, are we playing for points?” Shiro asked. “Does the winning team get anything?”

“Oh, I have an idea!” Romelle clapped her hands together. “Losing team for the round takes shots!”

“You’re trying to get us all drunk,” Hunk gave her a disapproving look.

“Of course! Here, let me go grab something!”

After the girls (plus Shiro) kicked back some foul tasting concoction, the group agreed that Lance would go next, so that he would stop whining. Not that they expected him to stop whining, but hopefully if he was concentrating on drawing he wouldn’t be talking as much.

Lance began his drawing, his team hovered over trying to see what it might be.

“Tea? Earl grey? Chai? Matcha? Coffee? Java? Espresso?” Keith began trying words.

“Maybe a tea set?” Matt asked. “Or Cider? Hot chocolate?”

“Big kettle! Flip their lid? A spout?” Hunk tried.

“Full of hot air?” James asked.

“Nah, he’d just draw Keith for that,” Pidge joked.

“Quiet from the peanut gallery!” Lance hissed. Seeing that his team was getting nowhere, he added to his drawing.

“Is that Batman?” Matt asked.

“Oh you’re right, Batman and Alfred!” Keith agreed.

“Or maybe it’s Robin? Like maybe a young Dick Grayson?” James asked.

“Who?” Hunk asked.

Lance continued to draw circles around the small person and arrows pointing at the teapot, desperation in his eyes, until Pidge finally called out time.

“Okay, ladies, do your worst,” Lance sighed, turning the paper towards them.

The girls (plus Shiro) stared at the page for a few minutes, muttering amongst each other. Finally, after the boys were beginning to get a bit antsy, They finally broke apart.

“Well?” Lance asked.

“We got nothing,” Pidge shrugged.

“Oh come on, it’s not that bad!” Lance whined.

“Well what is it?” Keith asked.

“Stout! Like, see a little teapot? Little like Pidge, not big like Sven? Because the teapot is short and _stout_!”

The group looked at the drawing again, nodding their hands and muttering things such as “ohh” and “yeah, now I see it”.

“Wait, no one got it,” Romelle pointed out. “What do we do for shots?”

“Everyone take a shot!” Pidge yelled, running up to top off everyone’s glasses.

Allura picked up the pencil next, tentatively taking a card off the top of the pile. Her face fell as she examined it. Finally an idea seemed to spark in her head, and she began to scribble.

Once she had finally presented it to her team, a look of triumph on her face, Shiro noticed that that was definitely him on the page.

“Uh, me? Sven?” Shiro asked, pointing at himself.

“There is definitely no card that just says ‘Sven’ on it,” Pidge rolled her eyes. “Maybe… uh, okay. That is Sven in Sweden. Then Sven in America.”

“Is that a potato baby on the right too?” Romelle asked.

Shiro squinted at it. “Yeah. Potato baby. And… is that a dog? Kosmo? Me coming to America to meet Keith? Dating?”

“Idiots? Idiots in love? Like really dumb idiots?” Romelle asked.

“What?” Shiro asked, scandalised.

“Green card!” Pidge snapped her fingers. Or Immigration?”

Allura perked up at that, and began to wave her arms at Pidge.

“Or… Uh… moving? Moving somewhere warm?” Pidge asked. She appeared to have blanked under the pressure.

“Marriage proposal!” Romelle shrieked. “Sven and Keith are getting married!”

“You’re getting married?” Matt spluttered.

“No, we aren’t” Keith groaned.

“I think that’s a snow globe,” Shiro interrupted, looking at the side. “Or maybe it really is just a potato baby.”

Finally, just as the last grain of sand was about to fall through the hourglass Pidge shrieked “Emigration!”

“Yes!” Allura screamed, pulling Pidge into a hug. The boys all shrugged to each other before dutifully taking a shot.

“Wait, what is the potato baby? And thing at the top?” Romelle asked.

“Potato baby is a hamburger. And the thing at the top is an eagle,” Allura answered sheepishly.

“Yikes.”

At this point the group was becoming more and more rowdy as more alcohol entered their system as well as the group energy edging them on. By the time James put his pencil to the page, everyone was practically yelling at each other.

“Scale! Drawn to scale! Pounds! Fitness! Weight loss!” his group yelled.

James realised he had to amend his drawing.

“Dead weight!” Keith yelled.

“Death by overeating. Or obesity! Yeah that!” Lance tried.

“0 trans fat?” Hunk asked, giving the page a funny look. “Or 0 sugar? 0 sugar added? Man, I don’t know.”

“Why is there Teddy Grahams?” Keith asked.

“Dude, that’s Count Chocula,” Lance snorted.

“Uh, no it isn’t. Those are obviously bears”.

“No that is definitely Count Chocula! Trust me, I know my Count Chocula.”

“Okay but you’re ignoring the fact there are literally bears on the box?”

“ _Murder bears!_ ”

They all looked in stunned silence at Matt, who had been rather quiet this round until that point.

“No, not murder bears,” James finally spoke.

There was a bit more quiet murmuring amongst the group until Hunk finally gasped, whispering “Kilogram!”

The group all looked at the page, stunned.

Kill-O-Graham.

Kilogram.

Lance let out a loud groan, while James reached out for a fist bump from Hunk. The girls (Plus Shiro) dutifully took their shots.

When Romelle picked up her card, she looked done. Done, and she hadn’t even started drawing yet. She tentatively drew a line. Then another. Then another. And another.

“Wavelength?”

“Richter scale? Magnitude whatever earthquake?”

“Maybe a heartbeat?”

“A heart attack!”

“Tachycardia! Or, what is that other thing…”

“Dysrhythmia?”

“Yeah! That’s gotta be it!”

Romelle began drawing another line, but as her teammates screamed out “Waves! The tide! Tsunami!” her line veered off partway through. She let out a loud sob and laid her head in her arms, waiting for it to be over.

“Anxiety!” Shiro shouted.

“Romelle’s heartbeat playing this stupid fucking game!” Pidge screamed.

“Time,” Matt called. “Also, language.”

“So boys, what do you think?” Lance asked.

After a few minutes of shrugging and half-hearted jokes of ideas Romelle finally choked out, “Texture. It was texture. How do you draw texture?”

One round of shots later and it was Keith’s turn to take up the pencil. He smirked. “Okay, Lance, I’m counting on you for this one.”

“Me? Oh, okay! Yeah, let’s do this!” Lance stared at the page in determination.

“Okay… pepperoni. An alligator. A cave! A windy cave!” He tried. “Oh, no, no, no… what is that thing called. It’s a thermos!”

Keith increased his grip on the pencil. Shiro swore he could hear the wood cracking.

“Lance, would you shut up?” Matt sighed. “Think instead of just talking.”

With the sudden lull James pitched in, “Is it Sylvanas? It looks like Sylvanas.”

“You play WoW?” Matt asked, side eyeing him.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Oh my god you’re such a nerd.”

“We are literally all nerds!” James forgot about the glass he was holding in his hand, throwing his hands in the air and sloshing the drink unceremoniously all down his shirt. He yanked his shirt off to make sure the grape soda didn’t drip onto his khakis, sighing. “I’ll go deal with this after the round.” Hunk handed him the bowl of popcorn as comfort.

They watched as Keith added the last part to the drawing, eye twitching furiously, Lance continuing to babble words that were completely unrelated to the drawing.

“See it’s wind! A windy cave!” Lance shouted triumphantly.

“How the fuck does this look like a windy cave?” Keith shouted, pencil finally snapping under his grip.

“Well maybe if you weren’t so shit at drawing I’d be able to tell what it actually is!” Lance snapped back.

“Oh, like you did any better!” Keith screamed back. “If I recall, no one got yours. And here I was counting on you to get this but I should have known better!” Keith threw the broken pencil down at the table with as much force as he could muster. The two halves of the pencil that were barely holding together finally severed. One half flew safely to the ground, while the other half flew straight at James, freshly sharpened lead making a beeline straight for James’s chest.

“Oh, god! My nipple!” James screamed, standing up and clutching his chest. Of course, he had forgotten that he had been holding a large bowl of popcorn on his lap.

Hunk, seeing the impending disaster, shouted “noooooooo” while diving across the room, heroically sliding to catch the bowl before it fell, saving most of the popcorn from the floor in the process.

Of course things can never end so smoothly, as during his dive he managed to kick the leg out of Pidge’s chair, causing her to topple over backwards, which in turn caused her shoe to fly off, hitting her mom square in the face, who had just walked into the room to ask if everything was alright due to the commotion.

“Katie,” she deadpanned, shoe falling to the floor.

“Ow,” Pidge sobbed from the ground. All around her James was tearing up, clutching his nipple. Hunk was lying on the floor, solemnly popping popcorn into his mouth. Keith at least had the decency to look sheepish.

“Just so you all know, I’m editing the list,” Romelle said, pulling up the Google Doc on her phone.

Pictionary

Keith- 2018 (windy cave)

Lance- 2018 (windy cave)

“Don’t break my house,” Colleen sighed before exiting the room.

“Thanks for the concern, mom!” Pidge called after her.

“So, do we still get to guess?” Allura asked.

“Go for it,” Keith shrugged.

“Well that is obviously Lotor’s mom,” Pidge nodded.

“Thank you!” Keith shouted, sitting back in the couch in triumph.

“She’s talking… Nag? She nags a lot.”

“Yes!” Keith yelled, fist pumping up in the air. “Pidge, I love you. You’re my new best friend. Friendship with Lance is over.”

“Hey!” Lance complained.

As they cleaned up the game, Matt offered James one of his shirts to wear, as his was very stained and sticky. He popped it into a bowl of hydrogen peroxide and hoped that would get out the worst of it. Romelle produced a Hello Kitty Band-Aid out of her purse to give to James, who placed it gingerly over his nipple despite protesting “No, I do not need a Band-Aid” and “It’s not even bleeding why are you even doing this”. Matt returned with a clean shirt, and James put it on.

“Hmm, it’s a bit tight in the shoulders, but I think it should do. You still look good,” Matt commented.

“You sure man? He’s a lot more broad shouldered than you. That shirt is straining,” Lance called over.

“Well what do you want, for him to wear Katie’s clothing? Sure it’s tight, but it just shows off his assets!” Matt called back.

“Jesus, Matt, stop hitting on all the guests!” Pidge yelled from across the room.

“ _Katie_!”

Shiro looked up from the commotion to Keith who plopped down on the couch beside him, offering a brownie. “Hunk made them,” he said with a small shrug.

Shiro smiled and took it. “So, so far it’s been pretty eventful.” He took a bite. Yup, that’s definitely Hunk’s doing.

“At least no punches have been thrown, and no one has wound up in the hospital.”

“And who’s the one usually throwing punches and landing in the hospital?” Shiro snorted.

“Shut up!” Keith gave him a light punch to the arm, but he had a smile on his face. “Besides, the night isn’t over yet. There’s still time.”

The next game taken out of the pile was Cards Against Humanity.

“Are we sure we want Hunk choosing for round one?” Pidge asked. “I mean, he was banned from Apples to Apples for being indecisive.”

“Oh man, is this game similar? I’ve never heard of it,” Hunk replied.

“Yeah. You pick a black card, read it out, and everyone will submit a white card that they think is the most funny and relevant to it. Then you choose who gave the best answer.”

Hunk nodded. “Okay. This time, this time I’ll do good. It will be great. You will see.”

The rest of the group picked up their white cards. Some stifled giggles, some eyebrows were raised, and some simply groaned at their hands. Hunk decided to forgo picking up any white cards for now- he had to concentrate. After the group had settled with their hands, he picked up the first black card from the stack.

“Why do I hurt all over?” He read out loud.

Several minutes passed while people mulled over their responses. Once they were finally in, Hunk shuffled the cards and prepared to read them.

“Okay, so remember, it was ‘why do I hurt all over’. So the first one… oh boy. I can do this. The first reason I hurt all over! The reason is… coat… coat… coat hanger…”

Shiro noticed his face was turning red. He was starting to sweat. He stammered a few more times.

“Coat hanger… abortions,” he finally squeaked out.

“You’re doing great buddy,” Lance patted his back.

Hunk nodded. “Okay. Well that’s, uh, that’s terrible. The next one! The reason I hurt all over is… crucifixion. Oh my. Okay. Next we have 50,000 volts of lightning straight to the… the…” he turned even more red before he finally squeaked “nipples”. Hunk cleared his throat and let out a sigh, mentally preparing himself. “Okay. Next we have… taking off your shirt! Haha, that’s James. Right now. Because he took off his shirt and got hit. Sorry dude.”

James shrugged. “Hey, in hindsight it is a little funny. But also painful.”

“Okay next reason I hurt all over is… smallpox! Yeah, yeah I think that would hurt. Legit. Next is an endless stream of diarrhoea. Oh no. Why. That’s not good. Not good at all. Our second last three d-d-di-” he stuttered a few times before finally stammering out “three dicks at the same time.”

Hunk drew in a deep breath before flipping over the last card. “And finally we have… oh, I can’t say this. Lance, you read it.”

Lance glanced at the card and stifled a giggle. “I don’t know, you’re the chooser, you gotta read it, man.”

“Please?” Hunk begged. “Come on, Romelle! Do me a favour!”

When she read the card she let out a laugh. “Sorry, but it’s your duty! We cannot take it from you.”

“Come on Hunk, you can do it!” James said in encouragement. “Just do your best, we believe in you.”

“Okay. Right. The last card,” Hunk paused for a moment, “is… is… f… fu…”

“You can do it!” Pidge cheered him on.

“Yeah Hunk! I believe in you buddy!” Lance called.

“F… f… fu… f…”

“Hunk! Hunk! Hunk! Hunk!” The group chanted his name.

“Fuck mountain!” he finally yelled at the top of his lungs.

The group burst into a loud cheer, surrounding him and patting him on the back.

“You did it! You said fuck!” Lance pulled him into an embrace. “Hold on, I need a picture for Krolia to put in a scrapbook.”

When the group finally settled down, returning to their seats, they realised they had one dilemma left.

“So, uh, which do you choose?” Allura asked.

“And actually, what were the options again?” Matt asked. “I forget.”

Hunk looked at him with the most judgemental expression Shiro had ever seen on the man.

“No. We are not going there. And I choose, uh, these are all terrible. Okay, I guess taking off my shirt. Whoever that is.”

“That was me!” James smiled at the group. “I thought it was really fitting, in context that is.”

“Cool! So which way we going? Clockwise or counter clockwise?” Pidge asked.

“Uh, actually, I don’t know if I can do another round of this,” Hunk admitted. “That kinda took a lot out of me. Actually, I think I’m gonna ban myself from this one. Hold on.”

Hunk pulled out his phone and added to the list.

Cards Against Humanity

Hunk- 2018

Romelle frowned at the list and amended it.

Cards Against Humanity

Hunk- 2018 (can’t say fuck)

Hunk simply shrugged.

20 minutes later found them deep into a game of Truth or Dare Jenga. So far various players had had to do silly things- they found out that James really could not sing, and should never do that again; Hunk spinning around 10 times really fast causes him to get very nauseous and he should also never do that again; Pidge admitted she would be stuck on a desert island with Keith since she feels like he would just stab whatever wild animal that tried to eat them so they would be safe _and_ have food; Lance is honestly just bad at the game and should probably just stop; and finally, Allura’s first kiss was described as “slimy, and slightly tuna flavoured”.

Matt’s turn came and he chose a red block, reading the dare out loud after successfully extracting it. “Rub noses with another player.”

Matt looked at the group with disdain. When his eyes fell on Shiro, he noticed a sudden brightness to his eyes. Probably because they had known each other for a long time and Matt was comfortable around him. “I choose Sh-” Matt began before Allura faked a sneeze, elbowing him sharply in the side.

“Oh, uh, Sh… Sven,” Matt finally stuttered out.

Pidge threw her empty chip bag on the table with a dramatic slam. Well, the intention was there, even if it just fluttered down harmlessly. “Seriously, Matt? You’re gonna creep on Sven again?”

“No, that- that’s not,” Matt stammered.

“Oh my god, seriously, stop being such a freak. You’ve been stammering and blushing around him all night I can hardly stand it.”

“Katie, that’s not what this is about! I’m just… comfortable around him?”

“More like comfortable with his face.”

Shiro looked to Keith, who returned his gaze. “I’m not sober enough for this, honestly,” Keith admitted.

“Me too,” Shiro agreed.

“Why don’t we just skip the whole Jenga game and play a dumb girly sleepover game?” Romelle suggested. “Like, screw Jenga, let’s do Never Have I Ever.”

“Sure, anything to not watch my brother rub noses with Keith’s hot Scandinavian boyfriend!”

The group cleaned up the game and got the glasses ready. As everyone had gotten up for bathroom breaks and running to the kitchen for more snacks, Shiro caught Keith’s eye and with a nod, they both ran to the loveseat to claim it for the game.

“Aww, I was sitting there,” James pouted, returning with a bowl of M&Ms.

“We can fit three!” Shiro assured him with a smile, moving over and dragging Keith with him. James sat on the other side of Keith, and Shiro pretended that he didn’t just do that so that Keith would be closer to him. Nope, only innocent intentions on this loveseat.

“Why not just go on the couch instead? There’s room there,” Keith grumbled, pushing himself closer into Shiro’s side.

“And watch those two give each other mushy eyes?” James asked, gesturing over to where Allura was currently feeding Lance a chip while he topped off her glass, “Not a chance. Like honestly, you two are actually dating and you’re still not as gross as those two.”

Shiro heard Keith mutter “fair point,” as the rest of the group filed back into the room.

“So I want to start,” Lance announced after everyone had settled down.

No one really complained, so Lance decided to continue.

“Never have I ever tried to do parkour up a wall while drunk, then fall down into a rosebush and have to get 12 stitches.”

“Hey!” Keith complained, pulling away to lean towards Lance. “You can’t just target people like that!”

“Excuse me you what?” James asked, giving him an incredulous look.

“Oh my god, that was one time!”

“Oh right, I think I saw that in the scrapbook!” Shiro grinned, remembering the photo.

The look that Keith gave him wiped the smile right off his face.

After taking his shot, Keith started to announce “Never have I ever-”

“It’s Allura’s turn!” Romelle shouted. She ignored Keith’s glare, explaining, “We’re going in a circle. Allura is next.”

Keith reluctantly leaned back against Shiro again, while Allura considered her turn.

“Never have I ever… been to Denny’s?”

There were several cries of outrage from the group as shots were taken. Pidge promised her, “As soon as we are done here, we are going out for drunken middle of the night Denny’s. This is just criminal!”

James considered his turn for a moment before saying, “Never have I ever made a fake social media account.”

Shiro’s blood froze. Did he know? Was this his way of saying, ‘hey, I figured you guys out. Haha, you’re idiots. Sven is a Shiro. Good luck explaining this mess.’

Shiro looked over to Keith, who was looking at him whispering the word ‘no’ over and over again, eyes wide. Shiro looked down at his glass. Could he lie about this? It was dishonest. But what he was doing was dishonest. God, he really needed a drink. He eyed the glass again.

When he looked up he saw that the group was laughing at Lance, who was explaining the story about how he made a Facebook profile pretending to be his crush’s sister in grade 7 so that he could get to know her better and ask her out. For obvious reasons, it was a stupid idea and didn’t work out. No one was looking at Shiro, and no one seemed suspicious of him. He let out a small sigh of relief.

As the group settled down again Keith let out a smirk that sent shivers down Shiro’s spine.

“Never have I ever called my principal ‘mom’ while emceeing an assembly in front of the entire school. In grade 8.”

Lance gave Keith a scathing look. “That was low, bro.” He downed his shot. “You promised you’d never bring that up again.”

“Did I?” Keith raised an eyebrow.

“Never have I ever eaten dog food,” Shiro decided to butt in before Lance started a fight with Keith.

To everyone’s surprise, both Hunk and Lance drank to that.

“We thought they were cookies,” Hunk admitted sheepishly. “They were called Scooby Snacks and shaped like Scooby-Doo.”

“In our defence, they were _delicious,_ ” Lance added.

“I would also like to add that because of them, Bae Bae didn’t get any treats that night. Oh, and they were both 17 when it happened,” Pidge grumbled.

In the chair to Shiro’s left, Matt began by saying “Never have I ever had a crush on anyone in this room. _Just saying_.” He sat back with his arms crossed, pout on his face.

Shiro caught Keith’s eye, slight smirk on their faces as they took their shots. On the couch perpendicular to them, Allura and Lance were both nervously raising their glasses to their lips. Once she had put her glass down, Allura looked crestfallen. “Oh god, it’s Keith, isn’t it?” She asked Lance.

Lance choked on his shot that he was in the process of drinking. “No, no way!” He finally managed between coughs. “It’s not Keith! Oh my god! No! No no no… no no no _no_!”

Keith honestly looked as horrified as Lance did. “Nope, no way. Not happening. No. Just trust me on this… no. It’s not me.”

Allura looked a bit nervous, a bit sad, and maybe a bit hopeful. Shiro could practically see the emotions flicker across her face as the rounds went on. Lance, for his part, didn’t look much better. You could see that he was bothered by Allura’s drinking as well- looking at each person in the room, seemingly considering if they could be the one she has a crush on.

Honestly, it was kind of really sad. In a pathetic sort of way.

“How are they so dumb?” Keith whispered to Shiro. He had nothing to say in response.

Finally when Lance’s turn came again, he took a deep breath to calm himself before speaking.

“Never have I ever… looked at Allura’s eyes without thinking of the sun glittering on the Ocean back home in Cuba, and everything beautiful and loved about my childhood.”

Allura turned towards Lance, blue eyes sparkling from the sudden wetness in the corners. “Lance… that is so sweet. Thank you. Also, literally no one else is going to think that, honestly. I don’t think anyone else has ever been to Cuba.”

There were a few chuckles from the group, the tense atmosphere broken. “Are we playing the rules where if no one drinks, then they have to take a shot?” Pidge asked.

“Absolutely!” Romelle agreed.

Lance took his shot while Allura prepared her answer. “Never have I ever felt so at home around so many people that I just met. I really feel welcome, and happy,” she smiled.

Shiro smiled back at her, taking his shot. While most of them had known each other since they were children, Allura and Shiro were new, forcing themselves into an already formed group. And never did it feel like they fit so right.

-X-X-X-

“Never have I ever accidentally emailed every single person in my work chain ‘your fly is open, Merla’ instead of directly messaging them.”

“Romelle!” Allura whined. “I just didn’t want to say it out loud since it was so quiet in there… it didn’t work out well.”

“Never have I ever stared excessively close at a random woman in a store while discussing the evolution of street clothes.”

“I thought she was a mannequin, Pidge! You saw her, she didn’t move for like, three minutes!”

“That’s probably because she didn’t know what to say to you, Hunk. You were staring at her pants and discussing the social acceptance of jeggings.”

“But even before that!”

Lance decided to push things along. “Never have I ever hunted down a former Forged in Fire contestant on Facebook to message them and tell them every single thing they did wrong in the episode.”

Keith glared at him. “Oh my god, he was such an idiot! You don’t even understand!”

“I’m sure we don’t,” Allura soothed. “Never have I ever accidentally tweeted ‘how to get rid of ass pimples’ instead of googling it.”

“Allura!” Lance squeaked. “You’ve betrayed me!”

“Speaking of, never have I ever submitted an essay to a professor with their name as ‘Professor Assface’.”

“Ugh I am never putting in a placeholder name ever again,” Pidge whined at James.

“Never have I ever had the bomb squad called on my residence for letting a pressure cooker blow up.”

“I didn’t know it exploded!” Shiro whined at Keith. “I stepped out for like, 10 minutes to buy some cracked pepper!”

Still grumbling, Shiro muttered out “Never have I ever accidentally sexted the wrong person.”

Matt’s face turned white beside him, causing Shiro to smirk. It was vague enough that someone could have potentially done it there, but still completely targeted at Matt. Only, anyone unaware of his situation wouldn’t suspect he was targeting him.

Matt wasn’t the only one drinking, Lance joining him. “I accidentally sent Keith a rather graphic text once,” Lance admitted. “For some reason he didn’t appreciate it.”

“I really didn’t,” Keith grumbled.

“What about you?” Lance asked, turning to Matt. Everyone’s eyes were on Matt while Shiro struggled to keep a smirk off his face.

“I, uh…” Matt gulped, looking nervous. “I sent one… to my dad. My girlfriend at the time was really into roleplaying, and I was, um, setting the scene for that night. My dad’s name is in my phone as ‘Dadster’ and I was dating a girl named ‘Dynver’.”

There were a few “oofs” and other sounds of pity.

“What was the scene?” Shiro asked, eyebrows raised in a face of innocent confusion.

Matt’s eyes were screaming at him, even though he managed to keep his face rather passive, if not a bit mortified. “That’s…”

“Yeah, what kinky stuff were you into?” Romelle asked, elbowing him in the ribs.

“Ow. Um. It was… well, she liked my glasses, saying it gives me kind of a professor look? And she went to a Catholic private school and still had the uniform and-”

“Enough!” Pidge yelled, jumping up to force her hand over Matt’s mouth. “Nope. Nuh uh. Never again. Stop. No more weird sexual fantasies from my brother.”

Once they had calmed down, Matt gave Shiro a side glance. Subtle enough no one else would notice, but Shiro knew. A storm was coming.

“Never have I ever…” Matt started, “met my significant other through bad breakup songs.”

Shiro turned to him to give him a proper glare.

“Uhh, Matt, do you know something?” Pidge asked, looking between Shiro and Matt.

“Yeah, Sven and I realised a while back that we are actually connected through his ex. Take a sip, Sven.”

Shiro glared at him and chugged his drink.

“Okay, story time. I have to hear this,” Pidge prodded.

Shiro knew that Matt didn’t know the Keith story. He didn’t tell him, and Lance and the others all agreed the would keep it under wraps, for Shiro’s sake. He knew exactly the story Matt wanted, and that was what he was going to give. Sure, it might make Keith and the others think less of him, but. He looked at Keith, leaning into him with an encouraging smile on his face.

Wait, what was he thinking about again?

“Are you going to tell it?” Lance called.

Oh, right. How he met him.

“So, um. I have an ex. Named Adam. I met him years before I met Keith, in a library.”

Keith’s eyes shot open, looking up at him. This was obviously not the story he was expecting.

“So I had just broken up with, well, a different ex. One who shall not be named because he really was a jerk and I should not have been that upset over him. But anyways, the ex had broken up with me, I was a mess. My roommate told me I had to get out of the dorm so he could study without listening to me whining so I went to the library to, I don’t know, relax and find something good to read. I brought my iPod with me that I loaded up with breakup songs, you know.”

“What songs?” Lance asked, concerned look on his face.

He was thinking Adele. Shiro was going to prove him wrong.

“You know… all sorts. Rihanna ‘Stay’, Roxette ‘It Must Have Been Love’, Lady Antebellum ‘Need You Now’, Coldplay ‘Fix You’, those kind of things.”

“Any Adele? Asking for a friend.”

Shiro glared at him. “In fact, ‘Someone Like You’ had just been released.”

“Who cares about music, continue with the story!” Romelle called.

“Right. So, I’m at the library. Listening to breakup songs. I’m looking at the rows of books, and find myself in the romance section. I don’t know why, I don’t even read romances. So I’m gazing at the rows and rows of books of people in love and I may have started crying. An employee comes up to me and I see her mouthing the words, ‘do you need help?’ And so like the idiot I am, I say, ‘Thanks, I know where the self help section is.’ So I go over to the self help, and am reaching for a book about the stages of grief when, like in some kind of stupid tv show, my hand reaches the book at the exact same time someone else’s does. I jerked my hand back, because I was just really surprised, and wound up yanking my earbud out of my ear. The guy that had been reaching for the book looked at me and asked, ‘Is that Whitney Houston?’ and anyways, that’s how I met Adam.”

“Wait, what happened after?” Hunk asked. “You guys talk or something?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess. We found a table in a corner, I told him about all the ways my ex was a jerk, and he helped me realise that I wasn’t being treated fairly and that it’s good that we split and that it would help me heal from the wounds he caused.”

“Aww, that’s really sweet,” Allura smiled. “A little sad, but also sweet.”

“Also a little pathetic. What’s with you and bad breakup songs, man?” Lance slurred.

Shiro looked at him in alarm. Oh no, Lance was drunk. Drunk Lance had no filter.

“In fact,” Lance continued, “Have we told you guys how Keith met Sven? So like, we are sitting in our place one day, both studying for an upcoming physics test, when we hear Adele playing from upstairs.”

“Lance,” Shiro said as a warning.

“Not just any Adele, too, like the most smarmy and saddest breakup songs she’s even written. And it keeps getting louder, and louder! Eventually the furniture is practically shaking from it!”

“It wasn’t that loud,” Shiro was covering his face with his hands.

Keith put a comforting hand on his arm. “It actually kind of was. You have really loud computer speakers.”

“So eventually Keith gets fed up,” Lance continues, “And he storms out to go confront our neighbour who I honestly don’t think we’d ever met until that point. And he looked like he was ready for murder. I’m not sure, but I think he might have had a knife in his pocket. I was considering phoning the police.”

“I wasn’t going to kill him! Maybe just… rough him up a little,” Keith pouted.

“But then like, I didn’t hear any yelling. The music turned down until I couldn’t hear it at all. And Keith comes back like three hours later, and he just looks at me, and is like, ‘Lance, I am so screwed.’ Turns out Sven was listening to Adele super loud so he couldn’t hear himself crying over Adam dumping him and working out and stuff and Keith kept going on about how fit he was, and how his thighs were as big as his head, and how cute he was when he finally got him to smile and oh man it was hilarious!”

“Lance!” Keith shouted, mortified.

Shiro could hardly pay attention to the shouting match that Keith and Lance had just gotten into. Keith thought he was cute? Even when he was a blubbering mess? His Keith, perfect beautiful Keith, could like him even when he was a literal disaster?

The room went silent, and Shiro vaguely registered his hand was in the air, as if he were back in grade school and answering a teacher’s question. When did that happen, he wondered, looking at it.

“Yes, Sven?” Romelle asked, finally breaking him out of his stupor.

“Can I ban myself from this game?” Shiro finally asked. “I don’t think I’m emotionally ready for any more of this.”

Romelle nodded, leaning over to squeeze his arm. “You did good, Sven.”

As the rest of the group began to clean up, realising that it was almost 2am and they should really head home (and let Sam and Colleen get some much needed sleep). Shiro stayed on the loveseat, thoughts swirling through his alcohol hazy head. Keith thought he was cute. His Keith. Cute Keith. Keith could think something was cute. That _he_ was cute. Cute. They were a cute couple. So cute.

The cushion dipped as Keith sat back down beside him. “Ready to go home?” He asked, right side of his mouth curled up in a smile.

Shiro looked at the small dimple there and beamed. “You think I’m cute.”

“Of course I do,” Keith laughed. We’re dating.”

Shiro pulled Keith into his arms, head resting atop his.

“Hey, Sven?” Keith asked.

“Yeah?”

“If we break up, promise me you’ll at least listen to sad metal breakup songs?”

“We’re never breaking up.”

The words came out of Shiro’s mouth before he could even think or process what Keith had said. Once the words had settled in his mind, he tensed, wondering if that was too intense.

To his surprise, Keith just muttered a little “okay” and melted further into him. “When we get married, let’s play Adele at the wedding. Just so we can remember how we met.”

Shiro’s shoulders shook in silent laughter. “Sweetest Devotion. I think that’s our song.”

“Show it to me when we get home?”

“Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, thank you for your patience waiting for this chapter!! I find it easiest to write in the evening and I've been mainly working either evening shifts or back to back shifts, which leave me too tired to focus. I hope the next one will be quicker.
> 
> I honestly relate to Hunk in the cards against humanity part. I don't think I've ever sworn so much in a fic (or at any time in my life). I'm still not sure I've recovered.  
> To do the pictionary part I used this word generator (https://www.thegamegal.com/word-generator/) on the very hard setting then drew the pictures and sent them to Maliciously Creative. So shout out to her for giving me most of the characters' guesses! I'm still not sure how to draw texture. That one broke me. 
> 
> If the pictures are improperly sized (too large and causes side scrolling, or too small you can't see) please let me know and I will try to fix them!

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and Kudos are greatly appreciated!


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